I believe that the daily Setup of many Mac users is a MacBook + an external screen. This will not only improve efficiency, but also get a better large-screen experience. But this will sacrifice two convenient functions on the Mac: you cannot directly adjust the brightness of the external screen and the output volume of the external screen with the keyboard.
The specific reason is that the HDMI, DisplayPort and Thunderbolt interfaces transmit digital audio signals, and the volume cannot be adjusted. Only analog signals can be adjusted.
However, if you rely on the button solution of the display that stayed in the 1990s, it will obviously make the macOS experience become fragmented. So we have to find a way to get these two functions back. Here, the app I recommend is MonitorControl.
MonitorControl is an open source software on GitHub that supports macOS Sierra and above. It can not only adjust the volume and brightness of the external screen, but also adjust the contrast of the external screen. Adjust, and you can customize the type of shortcut key control, or specify to enable these functions on a certain screen, and even ⇧Shift+⌥Option such fine-tuning volume control can support.
You can download the latest Releases version from here. After the installation is complete, directly select the volume output to the corresponding external screen, and select the monitoring mode in the "Keys" option of MonitorControl, and then press the corresponding button to adjust. In addition, you can also click the MonitorControl icon on the menu bar to make adjustments.
If combined with keyboard mapping tools such as Keyboard Maestro or Karabiner, you can also easily adjust the volume and brightness of the external screen with an external keyboard, which is almost the same as LG UltraFine Experience.
The only minor problem is that when the LG screen adjusts the volume, there will be a volume control bar that comes with the screen. Press once to appear once, which slightly affects the experience.
By the way, here is a sentence, although macOS cannot adjust the volume and brightness of the external screen output, but the Windows installed with BootCamp on the Mac can. Understand what Apple thinks...
