My eyes are hurting from computer use.

I use dark colors when possible, but some applications only use bright white backgrounds. They are resulting in physical pain to my eyes.

I have turned my monitor's brightness down to zero, but pure white (#FFF) is still too bright.

I would like to reduce the maximum brightness without lowering the overall brightness any further.

In other words, I would like to display the area "X'd" out in the image below as a light gray without affecting everything else too much:

[![grayscale with x's over the whitest area](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pdPCh.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pdPCh.jpg)

What I've tried:

1. Reducing overall brightness. This makes all the less-bright colors too dim and only reduces the brightest white a little bit.
2. Adjusting contrast. This doesn't reduce the brightest whites.
3. Adjusting gamma. This doesn't make the brightest whites less bright.
4. [SunsetScreen](https://www.skytopia.com/software/sunsetscreen/). This helps a little, but when it reduces brightness, it reduces overall brightness, thus making everything very dim and muted.

The monitor is currently connected to a Windows laptop via HDMI.

I'm interested in any software that might help solve this issue.

Although gratis, open-source, portable software is preferred, I am open to paid, closed-source, and installer-based software as well.