I don't blame you if you don't care for HDR. With the right games and the right monitor, the effect can be spectacular, but anyone who has tried to use this feature regularly on a PC over the years will know the manual on/off switch, that some games work well and others don't, and will grumble and complain about why modern gaming PCs cannot reliably tell the user to grumble and complain about why they can't reliably tell the monitor that they are viewing HDR content without prompting.

Even more frustrating, leaving HDR on will likely result in a horribly washed-out desktop when you exit the game and return to the SDR world. If left off, it is easy to forget that this option exists in the first place. Similarly, if you launch a game in SDR mode and then switch to HDR, it's not clear that the setting will remain active.

Now a GitHub app is about to change all that. GameHDR, posted by user Xtremilicious, is described as a user-friendly tool that allows users to create custom shortcuts for HDR-enabled games. In other words, once you create a shortcut using the app, HDR is automatically enabled in Windows when the game is launched and turned off when you exit the game.

GameHDR is currently Windows-only and appears to have been tested on Windows 11 23H2. I tried it on my personal Win 11 system and found that the app... I found that it does exactly nothing. I was able to specify an executable file to run, but clicking the Create Shortcut button did not run it. Boo.

However, some of my esteemed colleagues went further and were able to create a working shortcut. However, we soon ran into another problem. Modern games, when first launched, go through a number of hoops, such as opening a separate launcher, enabling anti-cheat software, update checkers, etc. In other words, the game executable is no longer simply launching the game, it is starting the sequence that will eventually lead to the game.

Unfortunately, once GameHDR launches the executable and tells Windows to enable HDR with the Powershell command, its job appears to be done. Then, when the next link in the chain starts, HDR is turned off again. At least in some of the games we tested, this was a win/win. Many other games would work fine.

However, our benevolent hardware overlord Dave James has discovered a Windows shortcut to turn HDR on and off.

HDR has long felt like an add-on to PC gaming and still remains a half-baked feature. And despite the app's good intentions, universal, easy-to-use HDR still seems to elude us, at least when it comes to our beloved Windows desktop.

I have been reliably informed that Nvidia Shield has no problem instructing monitors to display HDR content, and consoles don't seem to have any trouble either; something in the PC implementation is not working, and as a result, PC games are not reliably displaying HDR content. I have had to fiddle with settings and jump through endless hoops in order to get PC games to display HDR content reliably.

Still, the effort is commendable. In the meantime, I'll work on my mental fortitude so that I can remember yet another keyboard shortcut. I'm sure I'll be completely grayer than the few gray hairs I have now, before someone finally understands this shortcut.