How to Turn Auto Brightness On or Off on MacBook

In this guide we’ll show you how to quickly enable, or disable, auto brightness on MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. We’ll also show you how to manually adjust your screen’s brightness if you turn auto brightness off.

If you want to stop your MacBook’s display from adjusting to the environment automatically, you need to toggle off a feature in its settings.

Keep in mind, once you turn it off you’ll need to adjust your screen brightness manually. You’ll want to keep a close eye on your MacBook screen’s brightness because if you have it turned up high while it’s off the charger, your battery life can drain quickly.

How to Turn Auto Brightness On or Off on Mac

If you own a MacBook that has an ambient light sensor, you can turn auto brightness off. The ambient light sensor will detect the current lighting environment and adjust your display accordingly.

In most cases, this is useful because it will help your eyes and conserve battery life. However, there may be times where your MacBook’s sensor isn’t adjusting the brightness properly. If that’s the case, you can try shutting the feature off. Here’s how you do this:

Click the Apple logo in the top left corner of the screen.
Select System Settings.
Click Displays in the sidebar.
Toggle Automatically adjust brightness off.

Now that it’s turned off, you’ll need to manually adjust your MacBook’s display to fit the environment. There are three ways you can do this.

How to Adjust Screen Brightness on Mac

First, you can use the F1 and F2 function keys located on your MacBook’s keyboard. The F1 key will turn the screen brightness down while the F2 key will increase brightness.

Another way is to use Control Center, located in the upper right-hand corner of your MacBook Pro or MacBook Air’s display, and adjust the brightness using the slider located there.