Opening games changes display settings.

Question

Opening games changes display settings.

Osh Boh 20

When I open games, my display settings change brightness, gamma, and contrast. Making my black and white balances completely off, creating blocky artifacts in shading and areas with light are way too bright to even make out any detail. I've set all of my monitor settings, graphic settings, and display settings to their default. It still happens no matter what, the only thing that changes it back to normal is right clicking my desktop and opening display settings. Even when I do that, tabbing back into the game just reverts them to the settings I'm trying to avoid. I do not have HDR on as my graphics AND monitor are both incapable of HDR usages. Also, closing the game doesn't revert the changes to my normal settings, I still have to open display settings for it to change back to normal. If the settings menu is open, I have to close it and reopen it for it to change back as well.

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Answer accepted by question author

Jobelle ann Candelaria 735 Independent Advisor

Hi Osh Boh,

Thanks for posting your question here. This happens when you run the game in Fullscreen mode, it takes over the control of your screen settings, overriding Windows. Windows 11 fails to restore the original screen settings, so the screen stays stuck with the game’s settings instead of returning to normal. You can do these steps to fix this:

Switch games from Fullscreen to borderless windowed mode and turn on Disable Fullscreen optimizations in the game’s compatibility settings so Windows keeps control of your display. Reset all brightness, gamma, and contrast sliders to default in your NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel graphics software, and make sure Windows HDR/Auto HDR are fully off even if you don’t have HDR. Set your correct color profile as default in Windows, turn off automatic brightness and Game Mode, and update or reinstall your graphics driver.

Also, just to check, does this happen in all games or only certain ones? Are you using Exclusive Fullscreen, Fullscreen Windowed, or Windowed mode?

Let me know if you have questions, I am here to help.

Give back to the Community. Help the next person who has this issue by indicating if this reply solved your problem. Click Yes or No below.

Thanks,

Jobelle C.

Osh Boh 20 Reputation points

2026-06-26T20:50:45.19+00:00

Sorry for the late response, This happens in every game I open. Borderless fullscreen seems to fix the issue for the games i've tried it on, its just unfortunate thats the solution instead of something fully taking over my settings. I've never seen this happen in my entire life until recent windows 11 updates. Borderless fullscreen gives latency and locks my fps to a certain number that i cant seem to change in game settings and ends up running lower than the target FPS i normally run at consistently, causing my games to run under my refresh rate amount and giving me a latency feeling in my mouse. This method seems to be the only thing that works. thanks for the help

1 additional answer

Your answer

Osh Boh 20 Reputation points

2026-06-26T20:50:45.19+00:00

Sorry for the late response, This happens in every game I open. Borderless fullscreen seems to fix the issue for the games i've tried it on, its just unfortunate thats the solution instead of something fully taking over my settings. I've never seen this happen in my entire life until recent windows 11 updates. Borderless fullscreen gives latency and locks my fps to a certain number that i cant seem to change in game settings and ends up running lower than the target FPS i normally run at consistently, causing my games to run under my refresh rate amount and giving me a latency feeling in my mouse. This method seems to be the only thing that works. thanks for the help

Answer 1

Hi Osh Boh,

Since the display returns to normal when you open Display Settings, but changes again when a game gains focus, this may indicate that a color profile, graphics driver feature, or display enhancement is being applied only while gaming.

To help isolate the cause, please try the following:

1, Check Windows Color Management

Press Win + R, type colorcpl, and press Enter.
On the Devices tab, confirm the correct monitor is selected.
If multiple color profiles are listed, temporarily remove any non-default profiles and test again.

2, Perform a Clean Graphics Driver Installation

Download the latest graphics driver directly from your GPU manufacturer (NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel).
Choose the Clean Installation option if available during setup.
Restart the PC and test the affected games.

Additionally, you can consider trying the suggested approach from the Independent Advisor. If the issue continues, please let us know:

Your graphics card model (NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel)
Whether the behavior occurs in all games or only specific titles
The display connection in use (HDMI, DisplayPort, etc.)

Let me know if you need further assistance, feel free to ask me by clicking "Add Comment" or "Add Answer" if you cannot add comment so your response will be visible. Thanks for your effort.

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