The brightness keys on my laptop work ok, and gnome shell displays a level bar when changing it.
But the level bar doesn't display any values (absolute nor relative).
How can I retrieve the current brightness value?
Say – e.g. for scripting purposes – to be able to restore it later, in a reliable fashion.
Use case: for example, you created a color profile at a certain brightness level – and after temporarily changing it around you want to go back to this well-defined fixed point.
Best Answer
You can do that via GNOME Settings Daemon which is responsible for configuring the screen brightness (and many other session-wide parameters). To access the brightness settings you'll have to use the corresponding gsd helper:
gsd-backlight-helper(use--helpto see all options).To get the current brightness level, run: