HDR is a feature that's becoming ever more useful for Windows users who want to boost brightness, improve color, and deepen contrast. Unfortunately, Windows 11's handling of HDR is too annoying for many users to bother with.
GitHub user VantaCode420 has created a solution with their Smart HDR Manager app, available for free to download and enjoy.
It so far has 218 stars on GitHub despite still being in the relatively early stages of development, and I can see why now that I've been using it on a couple of PCs.
Smart HDR Manager turns HDR into a "set and forget" perk on Windows 11
Smart HDR Manager essentially bridges the gap between Windows HDR and the content you're playing or viewing on your PC.
When a game launches or an HDR video starts playing, Smart HDR Manager automatically makes the switch from SDR to HDR on your system. When you close the game or finish watching a video, it automatically reverts Windows to SDR.
Within the app, you can automatically scan your system for games held in apps like Steam, Xbox, and Epic, or you can manually add each one that you want to enjoy in HDR.
A separate "Apps" tab is home to video players, web browsers, creative apps, and streaming software like OBS Studio and Streamlabs.
On the note of web browsers, those who don't mind a couple of minutes of extra work can create a Tampermonkey script to automatically recognize YouTube HDR videos within Edge or Chrome. The GitHub page has full instructions on how to do this.
One final trick for those with NVIDIA RTX GPUs is RTX Video HDR support. It can turn SDR videos into HDR automatically, just as long as you have HDR enabled in the NVIDIA app's RTX Video Enhancements section.
Windows Central's take
I didn't care much about HDR until I upgraded full-time to an OLED monitor. Now, with the deep color and contrast afforded by the OLED panel, it's something that I want to use as much as possible, where applicable.
That's really the biggest issue that most Windows users have with HDR; it doesn't kick on automatically when HDR content is being displayed. You have to enable it manually before viewing or playing content, and it doesn't turn off when you're finished.
Why isn't this a native feature to Windows? That's a question I can't answer.
Leaving HDR enabled across Windows without any actual HDR content in view leads to washed-out colors and odd SDR mapping. It's something that I imagine just about everyone who's mucked around with stock HDR implementation on Windows has experienced.
Smart HDR Manager is a work in progress, but I haven't yet had any issues while playing games or while watching videos. It turns HDR on when I need it, and turns it off when I don't.
Why isn't this a native feature of Windows? That's a question I can't answer. I'm just glad someone took care of the problem. Try out Smart HDR Manager on standard Windows or Windows on ARM. The latter is still in an experimental stage, but it seems to be working well so far.
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