Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Snow Leopard: Controlling Brightness?

B

badman89

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 24, 2011
212
0
How do I control the brightness settings in Snow Leopard?

By default there is some setting whereby the screen's brightness becomes dim after 10 or 15 seconds of inactivity (don't know the exact number). Then, if I move the trackpad or press any key, it goes back to the regular brightness level.

How do I change this setting? Thanks.
 
Go to System Preferences>Energy Saver

From here, you can adjust when your display or computer goes to sleep on both battery and AC power.

Also, consider downloading the free app Caffeine from the Mac App Store. It's very simple; just click the coffee cup icon in the menu bar and your Mac will not sleep. Deactivate it and your Mac will return to it's normal power settings. This is great in that you can activate it when you want to watch a video, then deactivate it when you are through.

I highly recommend against setting it to sleep the display "never".
 
I'm sorry. You've either misunderstood what I've written or I've miscommunicated it myself. Let me try again.

I'm not talking about sleep. The computer is set to go to sleep after about 5 minutes. This is perfectly fine.

I'm talking about something that happens within about 15 seconds of inactivity. The screen brightness gets dimmed to about 50% of the original brightness.
 
Take a second look at the advice in my first post. The preference pane allows you to adjust computer sleep and display sleep.
 
Systems Preferences->Energy Saver does have some options around screen brightness and dimming screens after a time. Look at the checkbox options.
 
iDecker said:
Take a second look at the advice in my first post. The preference pane allows you to adjust computer sleep and display sleep.
Click to expand...


Hmmm... My display sleep is set to 5 minutes. If I leave the computer alone for 5 minutes, the display turns off. I'm guessing this is what display sleep means.

But I'm talking about something that happens within 15 seconds of inactivity. The display doesn't go to "sleep" but it decreases brightness by about 50%.

Sorry I'm having so much difficulty expressing myself. I don't know the technical term for the phenomenon I'm referring to. But I'm pretty sure it's not "display sleep."
 
In the preference pane, uncheck this box under both Battery and Power Adapter

c2SW
 
iDecker said:
In the preference pane, uncheck this box under both Battery and Power Adapter

Image
Click to expand...

Thank you.

I feel like such an idiot now! :eek:


On a different note, I wanted to point out to you:

Also, consider downloading the free app Caffeine from the Mac App Store. It's very simple; just click the coffee cup icon in the menu bar and your Mac will not sleep. Deactivate it and your Mac will return to it's normal power settings. This is great in that you can activate it when you want to watch a video, then deactivate it when you are through.
Click to expand...
You shouldn't need any additional app to disable sleep during videos. This is something that just happens automatically (for me at least). When I'm watching a video or doing anything else in full-screen mode my computer automatically knows not to dim the display or to put it to sleep.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back