How to Enable HDR on Windows 11

This practical guide walks through how to enable HDR on Windows 11, explains the main requirements, and highlights common issues that may appear along the way.

How to check if your computer/monitor supports HDR

HDR is a feature of the monitor. Therefore, your TV or monitor must be equipped with the hardware component to display an HDR image. On Windows 11, you need to meet a few things for HDR to work:

• An HDR monitor that supports the HDR10 . standard
• At least one DisplayPort 1.0 or HDMI 2.0 cable and a GPU that supports the above standards
• GPU supports PlayReady 3.0

How to enable HDR with keyboard shortcuts

The easiest way to enable HDR on Windows 11 is to use a keyboard shortcut. Since Windows monitors do not display HDR with good quality in many cases, the shortcut helps you quickly turn on / off HDR when needed.

The shortcut that you need to use in this case is Windows + Alt + B. When you press this shortcut combination your screen will turn black for about a second. When it comes back on you will see an icon indicating that HDR is on.

Of course, the colors of the screen are also very different and more vivid with HDR enabled.

Enable HDR in Settings on Windows 11

The second way to enable HDR on Windows 11 is to use monitor settings. You right-click anywhere on the screen and then select Display settings on the context menu.

Next, you choose the correct screen to adjust (if using on 2 monitors).

You scroll down and then switch the action button to On in the Use HDR option

If you want more customization, click the small arrow button next to the switch button.

In this new page you can preview how HDR will look on your device and you can enable/disable the options of HDR. For example, you can choose to play a video using SDR even when HDR is enabled.

Auto HDR is an Xbox feature brought to Windows 11. Windows will try converting non-HDR games to HDR. Sometimes this feature works well, but other times it makes things worse. So, if you don't want non-HDR games to look weird, you should turn off Auto HDR.

Enable HDR in the app

Some games that support HDR allow players to adjust HDR on/off settings right in the game menu. For example, below is the menu of the game Doom Eternal, you can turn on / off HDR right here.

This is a useful feature because you don't have to leave the game to make adjustments.

Wish you have happy moments with Windows 11!