Optical triggering via direct bleaching of a Cr:YAG saturable absorber was applied to a monolithic Nd:YAG/Cr:YAG laser crystal. The method uses a single laser diode bar to bleach a thin sheet within the saturable absorber from a direction orthogonal to the lasing axis. By placing the Q-switch at the time corresponding to the steepest slope ( $\mathrm{d}T/\mathrm{d}t$ ) for change in transmission during bleaching, the pulse-to-pulse timing jitter showed a $13.2\times$ reduction in standard deviation, from $132\mathrm{ns}$ for free-running operation to $10\mathrm{ns}$ with optical triggering. We measured that a fluence of $60\mathrm{kW}/{\mathrm{cm}}^2$ was sufficient to enable optical triggering, where a diode appropriately sized for the length of the Cr:YAG ( $\sim 3\mathrm{mm}$ ) would then require only $\sim 150\mathrm{W}$ of optical power over a $1–2\mathrm{\mu s}$ duration to enable effective jitter reduction. Additionally, we measured an increase in optical-to-optical efficiency with optical triggering, where the efficiency improved from 12% to 13.5%.