Display brightness on M1 MacBook Air keeps changing?

[noenken]

TL;DR: The display seems to dim down under specific conditions and I can't do anything about it.

So, I got my M1 MacBook Air and was just goofing around trying stuff out. I knew MKBHD made a video in 8k at some point so I tried that and I can report it runs flawlessly without even getting warm. But at the 5 minute mark there is a error in the video and for a few seconds it's just green. During those few seconds the screen gets darker as if the auto brightness feature was turned on. But it's not. True tone is disabled, the screen dimming in the power settings is turned off... it should stay the same.

I made a video demonstrating the behavior.

And this is the MKBHD video used in the demonstration. (Timestamped)

The thing is I want to edit photos on my laptop. And that would still be doable, I think. But I also want to calibrate the display first and that simply won't work if the display keeps changing during that process.

Can anyone confirm or if it's a "user error" help me fix it? Because I'm sitting here scratching my head if I want to keep this machine. :-/

Also... Hello, I'm new here.

 

[AnaverageJoe]

Hi @noenken,
I was experiencing the same issues and was quite puzzled. After doing some digging around I discovered the source of the issue. When on battery there is a setting under the battery page in system preferences called "Slightly dim display while on battery power" when this is un-checked the display remains at full brightness at all times.

Hope this helps,

Regards and merry Christmas!

 

[fang-woem-rai]

Hi @noenken,
I was experiencing the same issues and was quite puzzled. After doing some digging around I discovered the source of the issue. When on battery there is a setting under the battery page in system preferences called "Slightly dim display while on battery power" when this is un-checked the display remains at full brightness at all times.

View attachment 1698680

Hope this helps,

Regards and merry Christmas!

He mentioned in the video that all the screen brightness automations from display and battery options are turned off. So it's not that. I wonder if pro m1 also has the same fault. I hope not.

Also, there are a lot of reports of macbook air screen having a "red glow" instead of pure white.. apple seems to have really botched up the macbook air laptops this time, especially the display and throttling.

 

[noenken]

He mentioned in the video that all the screen brightness automations from display and battery options are turned off. So it's not that.

This.

I can also confirm that it is still happening on 11.1. (Yes, I kept the MBA so far.)
@AnaverageJoe and anyone, really: If you have a M1 MacBook, please try to replicate my findings and let me know how it went.

The test settings are:
- Turn off Display Auto Brightness and Screen Dimming On Battery in System Prefs.
- Turn screen brightness to max
- Play the MKBHD video above from the 5:00 minute mark at fullscreen
- Look for dimming when the green stuff happens and for brightening again afterwards

 

[chabig]

So the green screen causes display dimming. It sounds like an interesting bug, but I wouldn't return the MBA over it.

 

[AnaverageJoe]

This.

I can also confirm that it is still happening on 11.1. (Yes, I kept the MBA so far.)
@AnaverageJoe and anyone, really: If you have a M1 MacBook, please try to replicate my findings and let me know how it went.

The test settings are:
- Turn off Display Auto Brightness and Screen Dimming On Battery in System Prefs.
- Turn screen brightness to max
- Play the MKBHD video above from the 5:00 minute mark at fullscreen
- Look for dimming when the green stuff happens and for brightening again afterwards

I have the m1 and this seemed to fix the issue for me.

 

[noenken]

I think I found it. It's only doing it in Safari. ... WTF? o0

So this might be a non issue after all. But it's still weird.

@AnaverageJoe Can you try it in Safari again?

---

Edit: Brave browser doesn't do it, Firefox doesn't do it AND Safari only does it on the MacBook display.
Can someone confirm?

 

[FenC]

I think I found it. It's only doing it in Safari. ... WTF? o0

So this might be a non issue after all. But it's still weird.

@AnaverageJoe Can you try it in Safari again?

---

Edit: Brave browser doesn't do it, Firefox doesn't do it AND Safari only does it on the MacBook display.
Can someone confirm?

I just tried it in Safari on my M1 MBP and it did not dim the screen. Trutone is on for me in case that matters.

The reason I am here is that my M1 MBP randomly dims the screen to unusable during use, since the 11.1 upgrade. I think it is dimming to the setting it uses before it shuts the display down altogether when it's been idle. I do have the auto brightness management on, but I did on 11.0.1 also and it didn't happen then. Anyone else reading this see similar?

 

[matrix07]

I didn't notice any dimming when I tested your video. M1 base MBA, Safari here.

 

[McCarron]

Sorry to bump this, but I have seen this randomly since I bought the M1 MacBook Pro.

And now today I'm seeing this a lot more frequently, on 11.2 Beta. The video doesn't reproduce it, but I'm seeing the same thing happening when surfing mostly in Safari and not watching videos.

 

[guitarguy316]

Turn off auto brightness in settings and then off dimming on battery?

 

[FenC]

I narrowed my issue down to running a high(ish) brightness on battery - not exclusively, but that made it worse. It got so bad I turned off the auto adjust brightness setting in Display, and it has been fine since. Of course it doesn't adjust for ambient light set that way. I left dimming on battery switched on.

I'm running 11.1, and it was fine on 11.0.1 before that, so I plan to give it another go when I upgrade next time. I'm not into running betas as I use this MBP for work.

 

[aquaqlabs]

my thinking is that the OS, occasionally puts a load on the battery, to test, via software, and that perhaps is not taken into account by other settings. its annoying. I killed off Safari for the time-being just to see.. I would expect settings, as in amblient light, battery saver, inactivity, else AaHAhaAHHAagGghh VirUseS are TakKinG OvR. that is all -- #aQ

 

[nuttyslack]

I've also seen this with my Macbook Air M1 running (now) 11.2.2. The first time I used it outside in daylight (not super bright sunshine) it dimmed to such an extent I could hardly see the screen content. I managed to get Display up in the settings and with some difficulty used the slider increase the brightness. It's just happened twice today whilst using it int the kitchen, for no apparent reason. Once again I used Display in Settings to increase the brightness.

In each case it was on batteries. I use Firefox as my browser and certainly for the two occasions today that was open. I have Automatically Adjust Brightness and True Tone enabled, as well as Slightly Dim The Display on Battery Power.

I'm not thinking of returning my Macbook at this point as I'm assuming it is far more likely to be a software issue that will eventually be fixed in an OS upgrade rather than a hardware problem. I also need to do a bit more detective work on the circumstances when it happens and will try unsetting Slightly Dim The Display on Battery Power to begin with, as the battery life is so good I don't think I really need this.

PS. I've now discovered the brightness keyboard hotkeys! So at least I don't have to fiddle around in settings if the screen goes dark.

 

[Quackers]

On the last couple of versions of Big Sur I can set my screen brightness to what I want but if I reboot it comes back at almost full brightness. Every time it does this.
I also had the screen go much darker when I unplugged the power cord even though battery was at 100%. All brightness settings are unchecked (slightly dim display on battery, automatically adjust brightness and true tone is off too).

 

[bagpuss]

I have this problem too. I spoke to Apple support, who eventually said "turn it to manual, and hope that it gets fixed in a future update".

Does anyone know if this has now been fixed?

 

[mzanker]

Still not fixed on my M1 MBP running 11.3. The screen randomly dims to almost unreadable while running on battery.

 

[noenken]

I actually don't get the dimming anymore. 11.3.1

 

[mzanker]

I actually don't get the dimming anymore. 11.3.1

I've updated to 11.3.1 but as soon as I enabled Automatically Adjust Brightness, the display first brightened up a bit for about a minute, then dimmed to just above the lowest setting.

I remember having the same issue with my iMac Pro to begin with but a subsequent macOS update fixed it.

 

[noenken]

That is not the same issue then. What I described in my first post was a dimming even with every automation turned off.

 

[jdennis]

I'm having a similar problem. MacBook Pro, M1, Monterey 12.4. The laptop is always plugged in with external power. I'm using an external monitor with the laptop open next to it as the secondary display (not mirrored). The display settings for the internal display has "Automatically adjust brightness" disabled. The battery power setting for dimming is not relevant since it's running on external power. Yet the internal display reverts to it's dim setting from the brighter setting I manually adjusted. This seems to happen after waking up after the screen went to sleep, but not alway, I'm not sure there is an exact pattern.

 

[Katzenjammer]

I'm having a similar problem. MacBook Pro, M1, Monterey 12.4. The laptop is always plugged in with external power. I'm using an external monitor with the laptop open next to it as the secondary display (not mirrored). The display settings for the internal display has "Automatically adjust brightness" disabled. The battery power setting for dimming is not relevant since it's running on external power. Yet the internal display reverts to it's dim setting from the brighter setting I manually adjusted. This seems to happen after waking up after the screen went to sleep, but not alway, I'm not sure there is an exact pattern.

This happens to me; just moments after waking up the screen both monitors dim. Did you figure out a solution? Sorry to resurrect an old thread.