# Change brightness on Sony Vaio

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-brightness-on-sony-vaio/171879>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 29, 2003, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-brightness-on-sony-vaio/171879 "2003-04-29T10:18:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Jammers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a183cd/32.png) [@Jammers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jammers)\
**Post date:** [April 29, 2003, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-brightness-on-sony-vaio/171879/1 "2003-04-29T10:18:14Z")

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Does anyone know how to change the brightness on a Sony Vaio. There’s and Fn key, and F5 has the brightness symbol, but I’ve tried all sorts of things, and can’t change it. Any ideas?

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**Author:** ![Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/96bed5/32.png) [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)\
**Post date:** [April 29, 2003, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-brightness-on-sony-vaio/171879/2 "2003-04-29T12:23:05Z")

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Fn+F5 should bring up a brightness scale on the display, then use the arrow up/down keys to adjust. Or maybe it was the left/right arrow keys… don’t quite remember, but I am quite sure that Fn+F5 is supposed to bring up the adjustment image.

I see Google reports some glitches with the adjustment if you’re running Linux:

> [@](#):
>
> If you have a 505, you probably don’t need this section. But those of us with the micro-laptops (SR and picturebook) have software function keys which don’t do anything unless you enable function key mode in the sonypi driver. (Note, I’m talking about keys like Fn-F5, which changes screen brightness on Windows and is labelled as such on the Sony keyboard.)

From [http://www.shallowsky.com/vaiotricks.html](http://www.shallowsky.com/vaiotricks.html)

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**Author:** ![honkytonkwillie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@honkytonkwillie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/honkytonkwillie)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2003, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/change-brightness-on-sony-vaio/171879/3 "2003-04-30T08:16:01Z")

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My Vaio laotop has a little mouse scroll-wheel that you spin to adjust brightness after doing the Fn-F5 combo.