iOS 26/27 low display brightness waking up on iPhone 15 Pro Max
I am experiencing a persistent brightness bug that began after updating to iOS 26 and remains unresolved on iOS 27.
When waking the display, the screen remains at lowest brightness regardless of ambient lighting conditions. The display does not auto-adjust normally unless I perform one of the following actions:
- Manually push the brightness slider up to around 80%, then it jumps drastically from lowest to brightest.
- Open photos or apps containing HDR content (which forces a brightness refresh).
- Lock and unlock the device a second time.
Steps to Reproduce:
- Wake the device.
- Observe that the screen stays stuck at a low brightness level until manually adjusted to ~80% or HDR content is loaded.
Troubleshooting Tried:
- Toggled Auto-Brightness (in that case brightness is consistent, but who uses phone without auto-brightness?) and True Tone off and on.
- Restarted the device.
- Reset system settings
- Issue persists across multiple major iOS software updates (iOS 26 through iOS 27), there was no such issue on iOS 18.
I reported this bug, but it's still unresolved (it's been over a year since it existed) and shows there are more than 10 similar cases.
There's a similar thread, don't know why it was closed, cause the problem is not solved: iPhone 15 Pro screen brightness issue aft… - Apple Community
