M3 MacBook Air screen is dim after opening lid

I am having this issue too. It happens randomly. One time the screen was completely dark but the keyboard was lit up. Most of the time the screen is about 10% lit up. The F2 button for brightness does nothing! I've tried closing the lid and waiting a few seconds to try again. I end up having to restart it. It's the only thing that I find works.

It's a frustrating issue. When my screen remains dark upon opening my laptop (M3), I move my bright desk lamp quite close to my screen and that helps to light up the screen. Odd, but it works.

Thank you Waynescott. I am having the same issue and the method you described helped me the screen brightness back up without having to restart every time this happens. I hope we can get a permanent resolution soon.

I have a 2020 MacBook Pro running Sonoma 14.6.1. This has never been an issue until recently. I open my Macbook and the screen is very dim with dim “highlights” along the taskbar on the bottom. Brightness control does not do much of anything in this state. If I close the lid and re-open once or twice it usually comes back to normal brightness. I’ve had this Macbook for years and it is only a recent problem leading me to believe it has to be some sort of OS issue. Would love to find a real solution.

I went the route of creating a new user, logged in and the same issue happened with this new account

Exact same problem here. Going to try the terminal command in a minute...

F2 key after opening lid (usually on battery, not always) only way to bring display back to normal brightness.

I'm having the brightness issue aswell and I never adjusted the text size, so I guess that can't be it. My Macbook is brand new, I bought it roughly 2 weeks ago.

Same for me with MBA M3 running Sequoia 15.3.1. It only happens the first time I open the lid after charging.

Thank you! Worked perfectly