Apple Watch Ultra 2 VERY dim inside and dark enviroments..

TEMPORARY SOLUTION UNTIL SOFTWARE FIX

-Make sure auto brightness is on.

-Place your watch face under a light so auto brightness makes your screen full brightness.

-Tell Siri to turn auto brightness off.

This will lock in your brightness to the max. For some reason, when you turn auto brightness off, it locks in your brightness to whatever it was at the time.

DEFINITELY A DEFECTIVE WATCH OR SOFTWARE INSTALLATION

So I went to Apple today and and asked to take one of their Ultra2s to the bathroom

After I convinced them to not call the police I compared their model to mine in the dark.

SHOCKING difference.

We either have phones with bad sensors or something went amok with the software

Exchanged mine for a new watch

To be honest I’d still like it a bit brighter but mine is drastically better

I’d suggest taking your watch to the store and ask to do a side by side

TEMPORARY WORKAROUND:

Assign Flashlight to the action button.

Turn on and off the flashlight. This blasts the photosensor causing the watch face to brighten. Use the watch...

The watch should stay brighter until it auto-sleeps, so as long as you keep interacting, it will be usable.

I just performed the latest update as well (10.2) and the watch is definitely brighter at night. Still not as bright as I would prefer, but definitely improved.

I have the same problem it's hard for me to see at night and the watch is so dim that it's completely unusable.

I have submitted feedback on Apple's website, and I have contacted support.

I have found a temporary workaround:

I assigned the flashlight to the action button. if I turn on the flashlight, and turn off the flashlight, it blasts the photo sensor and makes the watch slightly brighter. This condition lasts until the watch hibernates, so as long as you use it, and keep using it and don't let it sleep, it remains bright enough to use. Unfortunately, the moment the watch auto-sleeps, the watch goes back to an unusable dimmed level. But perhaps this trick will allow you to use your watch in a dark room when you need to boost the brightness... that is, until enough of us complain that they let us specify a minimum brightness for auto-dimming, or let us disable that feature altogether.

The function may be designed to maximize battery life, but I should be able to override that brightness level for usability and accept the slightly lower battery life. As it is, I probably wouldn't even need to have it as bright during the day so it might average out to actually a longer battery life because it's not very often I will need that amount of brightness at night, and I have to crank it to max during the day to have any hope of seeing it in low light conditions.

What I've been doing is: I assigned flashlight to the action button. If I need a brightness boost in the dark, I cover the face so I don't blast my night vision, and activate, and deactivate the flashlight. Doing this temporarily boosts the brightness of the watch face. It peeves me that I have to resort to this just to see my watch at night, and I hope Apple does right by us and allows us to specify a minimum brightness for accessibility.

Please please please submit feedback:

Feedback - Watch - Apple

I have had my Ultra 2 for a month. One of the main reasons I decided to upgrade was all the advertisements about how bright it was. I have a vision problem and I could not pass up trying the larger brighter screen. For me, it feels like false advertising because it’s a feature that doesn’t exist at night. I called Apple about the fact that the only way I can see anything on my watch at night, is to use a flashlight so that the watch will light up brighter. I was told that they do know there’s a problem and they’re hoping to have a fix shortly. The technician told me that the more people that complain, the better. Now that I realize how many people are dealing with this issue as well, I will return to Costco within the return window if there has been no resolution. I have already sent in my old watch, so I will be “watch-less” which is really irritating. I depend on my watch for safety as I am disabled. Angry, irritated and disappointed.

My Ultra 2 was dim too. From the Watch app on my iPhone, Display and Brightness, Turn off “Always On”. Your watch face will be black when your arm is down, but now your watch will adjust for the lighting conditions when you raise your wrist.

I have now turn the “Always On’ back on and so far my watch is still adjusting the brightness as it is supposed to.

I can confirm that WatchOS 10.1 indeed fixes the issue!

I had the same problem. I upgraded to 10.2 and everything has been fine since. The display is now bright and easy to read even in full dark. This is now the same as my previous Series 6.

I thought I posted this after the WatchOS update before this week’s, but it didn’t post. After that update, my ultra is much brighter at night and finally readable.

So I am on the third watch. Maybe I’m getting there.

I went to the store yesterday

I would suggest asking to borrow a floor model to compare in a dark room (I took it to the bathroom). You will likely see a dramatic difference

Ask to exchange the watch but make sure they process it as a return and repurchase. This way it gets sent in for a repair and will be examined for flaws

My third watch is much better and has some quirks that the other two didn’t

This watch didn’t mandate OS 10.0.2 before finishing the setup. The other two did. So there is a different baseline software present

My calendar looks different. The other two were color on color (light lavender on slightly darker lavender…)

This one is white on color with the background showing a fading effect which wasn’t on the other watches

Like you I tried all of those maneuvers and a few more. The Apple analytics program didn’t pick up any flaw. Therefore they still aren’t aware of what is going on

Hope this helps.