Overview
HDR support on Windows has a well-earned reputation for being confusing — a display can support HDR in principle, Windows can show the toggle as available, and the actual "Advanced Color" pipeline can still be silently disabled or misconfigured depending on the cable, the connection port, and the specific application currently rendering. HDR Status Checker queries the same low-level display configuration API Windows' own Settings app uses internally and reports, per connected display, whether Advanced Color is supported, whether it is currently enabled, and how many bits per color channel the active configuration is using.
Key Features
- Reports Advanced Color (HDR) support separately from whether it is currently enabled
- Shows bits-per-color-channel for the active display configuration
- Checks every connected display independently rather than a single system-wide flag
- Reads the same DisplayConfig data Windows' own Settings app uses
Why You Might Need This Tool
"Is HDR actually on right now" is a surprisingly hard question to answer just by glancing at a monitor, because SDR content displayed on an HDR-enabled screen can look washed out or oddly contrasted if HDR is toggled on but the wrong tone-mapping is being applied, while genuine HDR content on a screen where HDR is silently disabled just looks flat and undersaturated. Rather than guessing from how the picture looks, this tool answers the underlying configuration question directly — supported, enabled, and at what color depth — which is exactly the information you need before troubleshooting a specific game, video player or streaming app's HDR behavior.
How It Works
The tool calls the Windows QueryDisplayConfig and
DisplayConfigGetDeviceInfo APIs directly — the same DisplayConfig
subsystem Windows itself uses to enumerate active display paths and query
per-display capabilities — requesting the
DISPLAYCONFIG_DEVICE_INFO_GET_ADVANCED_COLOR_INFO information type for
each active display path found. The returned structure exposes flag bits for
whether advanced color is supported, whether it is currently enabled, and a
reported bits-per-color-channel value, which the tool decodes directly from the raw
returned buffer rather than relying on any higher-level, potentially stale Windows
Settings cache.
How to Use It
Open the program and every active display's HDR support, enabled state and color depth are listed immediately. Toggle HDR in Windows Settings and hit Refresh to confirm the change was actually applied at the driver level rather than just in the Settings UI.
System Requirements & Notes
Runs on 64-bit Windows 10 (version 1703 or later) and Windows 11 with no administrator rights required. Results depend entirely on what the display, cable and GPU driver report back through DisplayConfig; a display and cable combination that does not support HDR will correctly report as unsupported rather than showing an inaccurate positive result.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does my TV show as HDR-unsupported even though it supports HDR?
This usually means the HDMI cable or port in use cannot carry the bandwidth HDR
metadata requires — try a certified high-speed HDMI cable and a port explicitly
rated for HDR passthrough.
Does "supported" always mean HDR content will look correct?
No — supported and enabled only confirm the pipeline is active; actual picture
quality also depends on the display's peak brightness, color gamut and the
content's own mastering, none of which this tool measures.
Can I check a secondary monitor separately from my primary display?
Yes — every currently active display path is queried and reported independently, so
a mixed HDR/SDR multi-monitor setup shows each display's true state.