Over-exposure in screenshots and recordings with HDR in Windows 11

Even ignoring this issue, I would advise most people to keep HDR off. Most software is incapable of handling HDR properly. The only significant exception are HDR videos, where it may be worth it to enable it.

I just bought a OLED monitor a few weeks ago, and enabling HDR in Windows makes everything washed out for SDR. OK, with a lot of tunning, I was able to get it to be acceptable. Then I played a game supporting HDR (MSFS). Didn't look much better with HDR enabled.

Then played World of Tanks, that doesn't support HDR, with auto-HDR. The results were horrible. Every dark shade of gray became a very light shade of gray. Every dark scene basically became a lot of gray. Including dark UI parts and static loading screens. There was no gradient between those grays and black. I disabled HDR, and everything looked much better again.

Then, finally, I tried playing Cyberpunk 2077, which in theory supports HDR. I've never seen worse image quality. All dark content became bright greenish gray. There was no black at all anymore in the game. Apparently the game can't generate perfect blacks with HDR enabled. I think they missed the "D" in HDR, and the range is hard coded, instead of adjusting automatically depending on the scene. I even used ReShade to adjust the gray levels closer to black, it helped, but the image was still ugly and greenish and stuff like black hair was badly rendered. Then I just disabled HDR, and the game then looked gorgeous, blacks were black again (it's not enough to disable HDR in game, it will still look bad, you need to also disable HDR in windows).

In conclusion, unless you watch HDR videos every day, or play some game that implements HDR properly (if such a thing exists), there is no reason to enable HDR in Windows, at least with OLED displays. On regular LCDs, you may want it enabled for the Auto-HDR feature that sometimes makes SDR games look better.

I have a 4K OLED HDR 1000 monitor and I get what you say and I agree but I will go back to my finding of do not enable HDR in Windows but do it in each App instead, Windows Desktop HDR in Win11 (not tried in in Win10) is f@cking awful and Microsoft should be ashamed of what they have done there because its not usable at all!!! Like I've said before I make Microsoft millions of pounds a year, for instance I'm now enrolling a client with 2750 users in MS365E5, with Intune Premium and Teams Premium, Teams telephony and 200+ PowerApps and Power Platform Premium licenses. This is just one of the multiple clients I've done for them over the last 5 years and I'm disgusted with my experience with this HDR thing! Come on MS, fix your ****!!!

do not enable HDR in Windows but do it in each App instead

That's not possible. The HDR switch from Windows (Use HDR) is not just for Windows, it turns off HDR completely for that display. So, if you disable HDR for a display in Windows, no app can use HDR anymore on that display. I have it disabled in Windows (Use HDR Off), and the option for HDR is no longer available anymore for HDR YouTube videos on Edge. In Cyberpunk 2077 the only option for HDR becomes "none". The HDR10 option also becomes unavailable in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

And I'm not sure what you mean by "Windows Desktop HDR". I think what you are referring to is the HDR setting for SDR content (SDR content brightness). But there is nothing to enable or disable there, you just have a slider that adjusts between darker and brighter. That slider does indeed show values from 0 to 100 when adjusting it, so maybe you mean turning that slider towards minimum brightness. However, on my display that results in a very dim image that I do not like at all.

My display is an Asus OLED PG48UQ, which can do up to 450 nits for the entire screen, with peaks up to 900 nits for parts of the screen. And for me turning HDR off completely, which prevents its use in any app, seems to be the best workaround for the time being.

I'm not sure that true mate, I can watch 4K HDR content in YouTube, Netflix and Media player on Win11. The actual app push HDR to the monitor, just like desktop HDR would as long as you have the following but you must pay for it, so instead of the windows desktop sending the HDR signal to the monitor each app does. I am watching 4K HDR content on YouTube (Using Edge with HDR enabled in Edge) and looks amazing and no Windows Desktop HDR enabled...

Your Windows 11 device needs to have an integrated graphics card that supports PlayReady hardware digital rights management (for protected HDR content), and it must have the required codecs installed for 10-bit video decoding. Devices using modern processors support this capability. Some codecs might already be installed on your PC. Here are the common codecs that are required to play HDR video:

• HEVC. You’ll need this codec and a premium subscription to play HDR video on Netflix. To determine if this codec is installed, open Settings, select Apps > Apps & features, then search for video extension. If this codec isn’t installed, you can download it from the Microsoft Store —HEVC Video Extensions.
• VP9. You’ll need this codec to play HDR video on YouTube. To determine if this codec is already installed, open the Microsoft Store app, and search for it there—VP9 Video Extensions.
• AV1. To determine if this codec is already installed, open the Microsoft Store app, and search for it there—AV1 Video Extension.

How to Enable HDR Support in Microsoft Edge on Windows 11/10

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/how-to-enable-hdr-support-in-microsoft-edge-on-windows-10

Also make sure you use HDMI 2.0 or DP 1.4 for this...

There are some games, like "Flight Simulator", that need you to already have your display screen with HDR turned on before you launch the game in-order for HDR to work. So every time, before you launch the game, you have to go into the display settings and turn HDR on, and off after you finish playing.

In others, you can go into the extra options on the game page and click "Enable HDR Support" and windows will automatically enable HDR before the game launches and automatically turn off HDR after closing the game. This is so freaking awesome

So not all games can push HDR and "Flight Simulator" is one of them, just another f@ckup that Microsoft can't be ask to work on...

Here is a guide on crating a shortcut key to enable/disable HDR before you start FS:

Here’s Why You Should Only Enable HDR Mode on Your PC When You Are Viewing HDR Content

https://tftcentral.co.uk/articles/heres-why-you-should-only-enable-hdr-mode-on-your-pc-when-you-are-viewing-hdr-content

Make sure "Xbox Game Bar" is active and then "Win + Alt + B"

Here is Call of Duty HDR enable and you wil see a popup on your Asus when you start the game when the monitor enables HDR.

Here is my Windows Desktop Settings:

Here is the 4K HDR video:

Your screenshot shows indeed that video being played uses an HDR format. "Color smpte2084 (PQ) / bt2020" means HDR. I get the same format when I enable HDR for my monitor in Windows and play a HDR YouTube video. However, I can only get HDR in YouTube videos when the windows display settings for my monitor are set like this:

The second setting, for video, depends on the first one, so if "Use HDR" is off for that display, you cannot enable HDR video streaming for that display. If a video is currently being played when you disable HDR, it will continue to use the HDR format until you refresh the YouTube page, but you can verify using the OSD settings of your monitor that HDR is off, so the video is actually converted to SDR format before being sent to the display after you disable HDR in Windows for that display.

If you however refresh the YouTube page after disabling HDR for the display in Windows, YouTube will not even give the option for HDR anymore when playing videos on that display, and the "stats for nerds" will show a SDR format is being used, for example Color bt709 / bt709 instead of Color smpte2084 (PQ) / bt2020. But I'm guessing that's not what's happening in your case, as you probably don't frequently change your HDR settings.

I think I know what is actually happening in your case. Do you have multiple monitors on your computer? If you look at my screenshot, there is a drop-down at the top of the screenshot specifying the monitor those settings apply to. But if you have multiple displays, you could have HDR turned On for one monitor, and HDR turned Off for another monitor. I think that's the most likely explanation. You probably think you turned HDR completely off in Windows, but you only turned it off for a single display. You could go to those settings and select each display from that drop-down, and if my hypothesis is correct you will find that one of the displays still has HDR enabled, and that's why you can still watch HDR videos on it.