If you watch a lot of online movies or television shows on websites, or even YouTube videos, you are probably staring at your Mac’s screen for prolonged time intervals. While Mac notebooks such as the MacBook Pro do have built-in screen dimming controls on the keyboard, dimming the screen in that way does tend do darken out the whole screen, including the video. With the Apple Safari web browser, you can use a feature that will dim only the surrounding area, but still leave the video bright.
For optimal online video and movie watching, you can install a lightweight Safari plugin called Turn Off the Lights. To get started, launch Safari from the OS X dock, or by navigating the path Finder > Applications > Safari. With Safari open and active on screen, jump to this Google Code page. Upon doing so, you should arrive at the official page for the Turn Off the Lights plugin.
You may notice that the plugin is available for other popular browsers such as Chrome and Firefox also. Click the Install Turn Off the Lights button for your chosen browser, for this tutorial, we will be installing the Safari extension. Simply click the filename to download the plugin to your computer.
The download should only take a couple of seconds. Once the download has finished, simply double click on it to install the Turn Off the Lights plugin. You may receive the following prompt, in which you should click the Install button.
Upon installing the Turn Off the Lights plugin, Safari should now have a new button added to it. The button is a lightbulb, that is positioned next to the back and forward buttons in Safari.
That’s all there is to it. Now, all you have to do is click the lightbulb icon whenever you are watching an online video in the web browser. Safari will auto dim the screen for optimal viewing.
