Apple Watch SE not bright enough in dark environments

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57 points

Apple Watch SE not bright enough in dark environments

Just bought an SE to upgrade from my series 3. All good apart from this issue of the display being to dim in dark environments. It's so dim it's very hard to actually see the time! I looked into this and it seems to be a bit of an issue. The problem is you are not able to disable auto brightness so you're kind of stuck with it. I found other posts on here but couldn't reply as reply was greyed out. One solution, somewhat comically, was to take out your phone, enable the flashlight and point it at your watch to get it to brighten up!! That's not really good enough. What's the go here?! I've sent feedback to Apple. I think if you could just disable auto brightness, like you can with iOS, it would be fine.

Posted on Aug 3, 2021 11:24 PM

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Answer 1

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Dogboy73 Author

Level 1

57 points

Aug 4, 2021 11:43 PM in response to Eric--F

I ended up taking it back today and getting a refund. If it's a 'feature request' that you can see the display in dark places then it's not rally fit for purpose as is. The shop agreed and gave me a full refund. I've gone back to my Series 3 for now. The OS update continually fails because there's not enough storage space, which I now think was a good thing in case the update invalids my Watch to behave like the SE. I'll buy another one (maybe) once Apple sort this out ;-)

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Answer 2

Dogboy73 Author

Level 1

57 points

Aug 4, 2021 5:52 PM in response to sterling r

Unfortunately those settings don't help with this issue. The problem is the way the device auto adjusts brightness. We need to be able to disable this in the settings. As is with brightness at maximum it's still too dim at night to be able to read at all in some cases.

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Answer 3

sterling r

Community Specialist

Aug 4, 2021 5:45 PM in response to Dogboy73

Hello Dogboy73,

We are sorry to hear that you are having issues with the brightness on your Apple Watch.

You can change the brightness of your Apple Watch by following the steps here in Adjust brightness, text size, sounds, and haptics on Apple Watch

If you are unable to change your display settings to the desired settings, Update your Apple Watch

If there is a feature that is missing that you would like to add to Apple Watch settings, you can provide Feedback here.

Have a great day!

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Answer 4

Eric--F

Community Specialist

Aug 4, 2021 5:59 PM in response to Dogboy73

Hello Dogboy73,

Thank you for the information!

Since this is a feature request, you can provide Product Feedback about the auto brightness here.

Take care!

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Apple Watch SE not bright enough in dark environments

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