Does Auto brightness actually work???

same problem here, it's not something that is totally bothering me but it is somewhat frustrating. i have an apple store down the street i'm gonna go there and see what they say when i have a moment.

I think the real issue is that auto brightness just doesn't work like people need it to. There is no settings position on ANY of my many Apple devices that is not too bight in darkness and at the same time bright enough for daylight without re-adjusting and, yes, auto brightness is on and functioning in all. I have other devices with auto brightness that I never have to touch, but I am always fiddling with the MacBook, iPad and iPhone - annoying in the extreme! I wish that iOS would "learn" from user settings adjustments, or that Apple just got it right in the first place! Really, Apple, it's not that hard...

I read this discussion a while ago while having the same problem, but like a lot of you, was unable to find a solution. Since updating to iOS 6 it appears that the problem has finally been fixed by apple as all of my devices (iPhone, iPod touch and iPad) have all become very responsive to light, so I played with it and figured out how to make the feature work properly.

The slider in the brightness settings seems to act as a minimum brightness, so set this to a good level for yourself and this is where the screen will be lit to in a dark room, and in a brighter room, the screen shifts between this and maximum to match the environment. If you change lighting while the brightness menu is on screen, you can see she slider moving as the screen changes brightness, so it defiantly works.

And also, it seems that on iPhone, the feature uses the proximity sensor to know when the light sensor has something blocking it, which stops the screen dimming when you put your hand over the top of the screen, so this won't work as a test if your testing your iPhone.

Hope this helps everyone out !

I have noticed that auto brightness does seem to be functioning more effectively recently 🙂

Here is the solution:

Unfortunately this is becoming the "norm" with Apple. Any time you change a "setting" on your iDevice YOU WILL NEED TO RESTART YOUR DEVICE.

Recently I discovered this while trying to activate "sharing between iDevices" on iCloud. I came to realize, through reading numerous threads here, that anytime you change any setting on an Apple device the changes will not activate unless you restart your product.

Case and point: I read this thread in its entirety....toggled Auto Brightness ON/OFF...then restarted my device. Not only does it work, but if you open up your brightness settings in a dark room, then turn on the lights you can witness the brightness bar move on its own.

Lastly, consider the position of your brightness bar as a benchmark for how bright you want the phone to get. If you set it to the middle, your product will not exceed that brightness in any situation. Conversely, setting it all the way up tends to render the functionality of Auto Brightness useless.

-Paul

Something else I discovered, worth noting:

If you are in a bright atmosphere and then go to dark, the Auto Brightness will not dim automatically. You need to click your lock/unlock button for it to set. Once you do that it is money.

Best thing I can reccomend to anyone who reads this thread:

1. Go outside on a very bright day with your iDevice.
2. Turn auto brightness off
3. Set the slider to the minimum brightness that you allows you to enjoy the screen radiance, in day light.
4. Turn auto brightness back on
5. Reset your phone (Turn it off...then on)

Doing this should enable you to benefit from auto brightness, yet never have the screen get so dim that you're constantly having to adjust the brightness setting. Setting the auto brightness benchmark is critical to having it work properly. Benchmarking the setting ensures that auto brightness never exceedes what you've determined to be comfortable in bright light.

-Paul

Belay my last...lol, there's no benchmarking ability. Just realized this when I walked my dog this morning that the auto brightness hit max radiance. That said, setting the bar to a middle location still seems to help the auto brightness work better.

Ok...new discovery lol.

Benchmarking the auto brightness does work on my ipad 3gen. It works in reverse... Basically, where ever you set the brightness bar is the max dimness you'll get. It's not quite as efficient as my iPhone 4S, regarding responsiveness to a change in like condition, but it does work pretty good. Also, like I stated before… The screen will not automatically dim if you go from bright light to dark light. You will need to click the lock\unlock button for the dimness to set.

Funny thing is after some serious experimentation, I found that the auto brightness does indeed actually work. Believe it or not, Apple has based the new way it handles brightness on the reaction of the pupils in your eyes. Yes, it's different from the way iOS5 previously handled it and I'm not absolutely sure why they changed it but they did and it does work. Try this.

(1) While in complete darkness, turn on the AB (auto-brightness) and set the slider to what is comfortably bright to you. Mines at about 25% or lower.

(2) Now turn on a light, preferably bright, in the room and you'll see the slider adjust upwards, mines usually stops somewhere around the 50% point just under the ampersand (&).

(3) Here's where it gets interesting. If you now go back to a completely dark room you will notice that the slider will not move back to the beginning setting you first set. That's because since your eyes focal point is already adjusted to the iPads screen, your eyes would commonly ignore the surrounding light of the room, so there's no need to readjust it. (In actuality the ipad will eventually readjust, but it takes a lot of minutes to pass first before it does, under half an hour)

(4) This is where it REALLY GETS INTERESTING. Using the power button on the top of the ipad, shut off the screen with one click, I assume you're still in the dark with room lights off right? At this point, your pupils are now readjusting to ambient light in the room, which is zero. So if a bright light, such as the ipad, came on suddenly you would be blinded. However not so. Powering the screen back up, the ipad now automatically sets the AB to what you first set it to when you found the adjustment that suited you first in the dark (back to 25%), and whala, no more burned out vision from a bright ipad when turned on in the dark.

I can only imagine that Apple thought that with a device like ipad being so conveniently accessible, unlike something you would normally have to get up to boot like a laptop or desktop, they found that a lot of people would be reaching for it in the middle of the night and did'nt want you to have to wait for a brightness control to sample the surrounding light and bounce up or down to adjust, thus blinding you.

I apologize for the long explanation, just wanted everyone to be perfectly clear. Of course this is just my assumption, so good luck.

I have a 3rd generation ipad, and it does something similar, but only sometimes. The auto brightness works perfectly some days, and does not work at all other days. Here's what I find to work the best to fix it:

Take the device into a very bright room or outside

Turn the brightness all the way up

Turn auto brightness off

Reduce the brightness to just above all the way down

Turn auto brightness back on

Watch the slider move

This doesn't always work, but I would say its worth a try.

Another thing you might want to try is to find the light sensor. It's above the front camera on ipad, above the phone speaker on iPhone, and to the right of the front camera on iPod touch. If you look at the phone in bright light you can see it. Make sure there is nothing blocking it. Cut a hole in your case, or clean off any residue that might be there. If there's nothing, like I said, sometimes it just doesn't work for me.

It used to work on my 4 then one day it stopped. It has never worked on my Wife's 4s and it does not work on the brand new 5 I'm holding right now. I spoke with some friends about this and then did bit even know auto-brightness existed, they thought I was making it up until I showed them in the settings. It has never worked for them either. I think IOS5 killed it.

I hoped for perfect software with iOS but nah, fairy tales. I have an iPad 3 and iOS 6.1

HI everyone, Actually it's like this. If you set off the Auto Brightness, then it won't change under any circumstances. If you set it ON, it will perfectly work on direct sun light. Most of the time it respond very slowly or not responded to light bulbs or any other artificial light sources. iOS 7 has introduced the Brightness option in its drop up menu/widget to make things easy. However that's the way Apple has designed it. iPhones are the only mobile phones that comes with perfect retina display. So you can read the display even in direct sun light without higher brightness level.

Message was edited by: Samitha Kalana