Windows 11 includes a feature called “Night light,” which is Microsoft’s native blue-light filter. Similar to f.lux or Apple’s Night Shift, it gradually tints your screen with a warm, orange hue after sunset to reduce eye strain and help you sleep better.
While Night Light is fantastic for late-night web browsing or reading Word documents, it is an absolute disaster for gaming. If you launch a visually stunning, color-graded video game in exclusive fullscreen mode, Night Light will often stay active, washing out all the colors, destroying the contrast, and making the entire game look muddy and orange.
If you want Night Light for desktop work but need accurate, vibrant colors while gaming, you need to properly configure Windows to disable the filter during exclusive full-screen applications.
How to Stop Night Light from Affecting Games
Unfortunately, Windows 11 does not have a simple “Disable in Fullscreen” checkbox. Instead, you have to rely on a quirk in how the Windows Desktop Window Manager (DWM) handles color profiles.
Method 1: Force Exclusive Fullscreen
Night Light is a desktop-level overlay. If your game is running in “Borderless Windowed” mode, Windows treats it like any other desktop app and applies the orange tint.
To bypass the tint, open your game’s video settings and change the Display Mode from Borderless to Exclusive Fullscreen (or simply “Fullscreen”). When an application takes exclusive control of the GPU in this mode, it bypasses the Windows color profile entirely, instantly stripping away the orange tint.
Method 2: Use a Third-Party Alternative (f.lux)
If you play older games that do not support Exclusive Fullscreen, or if you prefer Borderless mode for easy Alt-Tabbing, the native Windows 11 Night Light is incapable of automatically disabling itself.
In this case, the best solution is to turn off the Windows feature entirely and install f.lux (a free, third-party blue light filter).
- Disable Windows Night Light (Settings > System > Display > Toggle Night light Off).
- Download and install f.lux.
- Open the f.lux menu from your system tray.
- Click the three horizontal lines in the top left corner of the f.lux window.
- Select Options and Smart Lighting.
- Check the box labeled Disable for fullscreen apps.
Now, your screen will remain warm and comfortable while browsing the web, but the exact second you launch any game that fills the screen, your colors will instantly snap back to their vibrant, unfiltered defaults.