iPhone 15 Pro screen brightness issue after iOS 26 update

Thanks for the effort, but this really shouldn't be called a fix, but a temporary workaround. Its insane that apple has made us jump through these hoops to regain the most basic function of our phones.

You can actually just tap the home button once to trigger the brightness to return to normal (if you have siri enabled) as the animation seems to be HDR and triggers the screen mode to change or something like that.

Here’s what I did to temporarily fix the issue

Updated to iOS 26.1

Changed to a new wallpaper once

Went to Settings > General > Screen Capture > Choose SDR

After these steps, the problem seems to be resolved for now.

So whoever mentioned to delete the widgets from the home lock screen, thank you. This eradicated the problem completely. I have not played with adding them back again to the lock screen because it was a pain fixing the issue. I’d rather forgo having them for now.

I've been testing the fix to remove all widgets from the Lock Screen, that seems to have fixed it. I think it happened to me once after I removed all widgets from my Lock Screen but it is waaaay better now.

I did also report this bug via the Apple feedback app last week, in my feedback it says "Recent Similar Reports: More than 10".

I have this EXACT same issue on the exact same phone as well. I’ve had it ever since I installed iOS 26 and both 26.0.1 and 26.1 have not fixed it. It’s a small issue so I’ve put up with it but I’m kinda hoping for a real fix soon. My main fixes right now are to either lock and unlock again or open a specific group chat because the background is an hdr image so it fixes the screen. I’ve already tried turning off the attention features thing and that didn’t seem to fix it, reduce white point and color filters are already off so it can’t be those, and I don’t feel this issue is bad enough to sacrifice widgets so I’m not turning those off.

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I recently updated from ios 18.7.2 to 26.1, sometimes iphone after unlocked shows zero brightness which cant change and screen become invisible unless lock and unlock again. I think this is a sensor bug in latest software

I noticed the issue after watching Instagram and Facebook Reels, swiping up and locking the device and when unlocking it’s dim. I notice if I have AOD and or reduce white point turned on it is good. iPhone 15 Pro IOS 26.2

So whoever mentioned to delete the widgets from the home lock screen, thank you. This eradicated the problem completely. I have not played with adding them back again to the lock screen because it was a pain fixing the issue. I’d rather forgo having them for now.

I tried the workaround of removing the lock screen widgets that somebody suggested in this thread, and I can confirm that the problem was drastically reduced. It still isn’t 100% gone, but it happens WAY less frequently than before. I don’t like it because, after all, it’s still a workaround and I had to get rid of a useful feature, but I guess I have no choice at the moment.

Same here on my 15Pro.. Actually opening a picture that has HDR in the Photos app also fixes the issue. No need to open instagram at all. This problem seems to be HDR-related.

Found a temp solution for me. If the display is dim, one tapping the nav bar (bottom middle, similar to activating siri by double-tapping) brightens the screen to normal.

Hope this helps

Here too. iPhone 15 Pro / iOS 26.0.1.

Can confirm viewing a HDR photo in photos, Instagram or other sources, the brightness is adjusted correctly again.

Can confirm, if you disable the widgets on the lockscreen the issue does not appear.

If you reenable them, the issue is there again!