Turn Windows HDR ON or OFF with this keyboard shortcut Hotkey

HDR (High Dynamic Range) is pretty awesome and adds a lot to the visual experience if your monitor and content (movies or games) support it.

However, HDR doesn’t always play nice with Windows 10 and 11, and displaying SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) content in HDR can be a messy experience. Think of:

• Washed out or oversaturated colors
• Lack of contrast or overly bright white areas
• An unnatural/sharp transition between dark grays and complete blacks in gradients (very distracting in dark movies or games, especially on oled screens)

Therefore (older) games, movies and the Windows desktop environment will often look better in SDR. Sadly games can’t automatically enable or disable HDR, so you have to go to Settings –> Display Settings –> and enable/disable HDR whenever you start or stop a certain game or movie. This process can be quite cumbersome.

Luckily I discovered a handy hotkey in the Windows Game Bar:

I hope this little trick helped you out! If you don’t really understand what HDR does, I’ve written a comprehensive explainer article about HDR…