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Adjust the automatic brightness adjustment.

I want to keep "Automatically adjust brightness" for my Macbook Pro (13-in, purchased 2019), but the automatic adjustment makes the screen too dark when the room is dark. So, I go to the System Preferences and increase the brightness. Then, when the room becomes bright, the screen becomes too bright.


So, I want to reduce the "amplitude" of the brightness adjustment. Is there such a parameter?


MacBook Pro 13”, macOS 10.14

Posted on May 2, 2019 2:36 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 2, 2019 6:34 AM

ryofurue wrote:

I want to keep "Automatically adjust brightness" for my Macbook Pro (13-in, purchased 2019), but the automatic adjustment makes the screen too dark when the room is dark. So, I go to the System Preferences and increase the brightness. Then, when the room becomes bright, the screen becomes too bright.

So, I want to reduce the "amplitude" of the brightness adjustment. Is there such a parameter?



No user set parameter beyond turning off this preference/ or on.


You can try specifically

resetting the SMC https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295


for back light control





From >System Preferences>Display If you turn this off by unselecting the "Automaticaly adjust"option


You can still use the keyboard keys F1 and F2 to manually adjust the back light. This seems to work better.




How to reset the System Management Controller (SMC) - Apple Support


macOS: Adjust your display's brightness - Apple Support


Change General preferences on Mac - Apple Support


6 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 2, 2019 6:34 AM in response to ryofurue

ryofurue wrote:

I want to keep "Automatically adjust brightness" for my Macbook Pro (13-in, purchased 2019), but the automatic adjustment makes the screen too dark when the room is dark. So, I go to the System Preferences and increase the brightness. Then, when the room becomes bright, the screen becomes too bright.

So, I want to reduce the "amplitude" of the brightness adjustment. Is there such a parameter?



No user set parameter beyond turning off this preference/ or on.


You can try specifically

resetting the SMC https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295


for back light control





From >System Preferences>Display If you turn this off by unselecting the "Automaticaly adjust"option


You can still use the keyboard keys F1 and F2 to manually adjust the back light. This seems to work better.




How to reset the System Management Controller (SMC) - Apple Support


macOS: Adjust your display's brightness - Apple Support


Change General preferences on Mac - Apple Support


May 22, 2019 10:55 PM in response to Paolo Massano

> I have really hard time understanding how automatic brightness works. Do I have to tweak brightness limits in dark and bright environment in order to give automatic brightness a range or what?


I also wonder exactly that. How do these three things interact?


  1. The brightness slider in the System Preferences.
  2. The brightness control on the keyboard.
  3. The "Automatically adjust brightness" switch in the System Preferences.



May 3, 2019 9:56 PM in response to leroydouglas

Thank you for your response!


> You can still use the keyboard keys F1 and F2 to manually adjust the back light.

> This seems to work better.


Indeed, it did work better, when I was using a 2014 MacBook Air! My new MacBook Pro has the touch bar (is that the name?), which normally shows only the "entry" to brightness control, not the brightness buttons themselves. That means that brightness control is usually a two-step operation: Press the brightness control button and then press one of the brightness buttons.


May 21, 2019 11:26 PM in response to leroydouglas

Good to know about resetting SMC and PRAM/VRAM, but I have a question.


Supposing that I have "Automatically adjust brightness" enabled and I override it by manually changing brighness, does this change the future way auto brightness works or it will just revert to "standard" after a certain period of time?


In other way: is there a default setting for brightness or changing it manually will forever change the behavior of the automatic brightness?


Sorry for my poor English. writing from italy


May 22, 2019 8:21 AM in response to Paolo Massano

Paolo Massano wrote:

Good to know about resetting SMC and PRAM/VRAM, but I have a question.

Supposing that I have "Automatically adjust brightness" enabled and I override it by manually changing brighness, does this change the future way auto brightness works or it will just revert to "standard" after a certain period of time?

In other way: is there a default setting for brightness or changing it manually will forever change the behavior of the automatic brightness?

Sorry for my poor English. writing from italy



Uncheck the auto brightness if you want full manual control;.

May 22, 2019 8:35 AM in response to leroydouglas

I don't want the full manual control...


What I want to understand is:

If I use automatic brightness, BUT in some case I need to change manually the brightness, does this change the future behavior of automatic brightness?


I have really hard time understanding how automatic brightness works. Do I have to tweak brightness limits in dark and bright environment in order to give automatic brightness a range or what?


is there a way to revert the standard functionality of auto brightness once I change with Touch Bar the brightness of the screen?


Assuming that I am in a dark room but I want to push brightness high, I noticed that that brightness setting in maintained every time I find myself in similar light conditions.


I tought that maybe after some time, or a restart or after disabling/re-enabling automatic brightness it would revert to original range.



Adjust the automatic brightness adjustment.

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