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

Screen dims regardless of preference settings

keysersoze said:
5 Times?!?! :eek:
Click to expand...


Yes 5 times! I bought the inverter from moniserv, and had to have them send me 4 replacements until I got one that worked. It worked great for a while, but now I'm back to my dim state. Wonder if my bulbs are bad? The inverter obviously was bad though, my light was blinking in the bottom right, and it did fix it for a while when i changed it. I have no idea what to do.
 
Jay42 said:
I don't know how to turn this off, and it can become quite annoying when you are watching something not in DVD Player or reading a long text file.
Click to expand...

System Preferences->Energy Saver
Change screen settings there?
 
Powerbook screen dims regardless of preference settings

I have a Tibook-800, and some time ago (I don't know if it was when I updated the operating system or what) this screen-dimming thing started happening. It's frustrating -- the screen saver can be so nice to look at with the iPhoto slide show going with the pan effect on, but every few seconds you've got to press F2 in order to keep the screen at its correct brightness.

I just upgraded to Tiger and noticed the new feature to uncheck screen-dimming, but it appears to do nothing. It's currently unchecked and the screen still dims after a brief period of inactivity, whether plugged-in or not.

I'm glad (sort of) to know that other people are having this problem, but it's an unfortunate bug in the system. I expect Apple would call it a "feature" but it's better termed an oversight.

If anyone has a solution for this, I'd love to hear it.

(I'm still so glad to have a Mac.)

Take care,
Peter
 
jay42 said:
Even when the lighting conditions don't change, the screen still dims after a minute or two of inactivity because it is trying to save power. I don't know how to turn this off, and it can become quite annoying when you are watching something not in DVD Player or reading a long text file.
Click to expand...
My wife has this problem with her 15" PB. She's been looking up and down system settings to determine what's causing the problem. No changes to Energy Saver make a difference. It's incredibly annoying.
 
Just a wild guess, but maybe you have your screen saver set to come on quite quickly? Check under preferences / screen saver (not energy saver)

also like someone said, try deleting your preferences file.

I have a 15' PB with Panther, and I loved the screen light sensor ( tho sometimes it dimmed the screen if my hand went over the side of the keyboard) UNTIL i upgraded to 10.3.9.

Then it went mad, flickered up and down all the time, responding to the tiniest change in light conditions. Drove me mad. Had to turn it off.

So now I have a PB screen that won't respond to ambient light conditions, which is a hardware feature that I paid for, which I used to love showing off to people.

Darn you Apple! (this is a known issue with 10.3.9)

.. RedTomato ..
 
How do I go about deleting my preferences file?

(Are there any potential adverse consequences from doing this?)

Thanks.
 
I can't remember offhand sorry (never had to do this). Try google, or maybe someone here will fill you in on the best way to do this.

.. RedTomato..
 
Temujin said:
You can change it.

Energy saver/options/ deselect "Automatically reduce the brightness of the display before display sleep"

seems to work on my 15" PB

Tell me if it works
Click to expand...

It seems to ignore that setting on mine. I checked the thing last night in an effort to see if it worked backwards but it made no difference. Until then, I'd never had it checked.
 
RedTomato said:
Just a wild guess, but maybe you have your screen saver set to come on quite quickly? Check under preferences / screen saver (not energy saver)

also like someone said, try deleting your preferences file.

I have a 15' PB with Panther, and I loved the screen light sensor ( tho sometimes it dimmed the screen if my hand went over the side of the keyboard) UNTIL i upgraded to 10.3.9.

Then it went mad, flickered up and down all the time, responding to the tiniest change in light conditions. Drove me mad. Had to turn it off.

So now I have a PB screen that won't respond to ambient light conditions, which is a hardware feature that I paid for, which I used to love showing off to people.

Darn you Apple! (this is a known issue with 10.3.9)

.. RedTomato ..
Click to expand...

Have no screen saver. But when turned on the setting still works. I wont delete anything when the thing works :cool:
 
Screen dims regardless of preference settings

I was having the same problem, and I reset my NVRAM:

Restart your computer, but before you hear the famous Mac chord, hold Option-Command-P-R until the chord chimes TWICE (it takes about 10 seconds for the second chime to happen.) Then release Op-Cmd-P-R.

It worked perfectly -- now my screen doesn't dim until it's supposed to. How nice.

Peter
 
howesey said:
A common feature of OS X - it has not enough options. Most users need these, but there are a few Mac users that will complain as the OS is becoming Windows like and is "impossible" to use. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Its a little tough to tell your tone here...sacrasm? I don't know, I don't want to read into your post incorrectly.

Anyway, don't get me wrong, I love OS X. Its ease of use is was separates it from every other competing OS on the market. However, I don't like when Apple decides to eliminate options just for the sake of ease of use. OS X should remain easy to use, but plenty of options/power for advanced users. This is one reason it is such great product.

This whole screen dimming thing is just one of those little annoyances I have with OS X, but I've always just touched the track pad on my PowerBook to get the screen back to normal instead of trying to find a fix. Again, this is not a sys. prefs. option.
 
UnclePeter said:
I was having the same problem, and I reset my NVRAM:

Restart your computer, but before you hear the famous Mac chord, hold Option-Command-P-R until the chord chimes TWICE (it takes about 10 seconds for the second chime to happen.) Then release Op-Cmd-P-R.

It worked perfectly -- now my screen doesn't dim until it's supposed to. How nice.

Peter
Click to expand...
I'm not familiar with this - are there any effects from doing this?
 
Resetting the NVRAM seems to be the fix!

Also, for some reason, OS X booted eerily fast when I reset it. Does this have something to do with one of the settings that was reset?

Anyways, thanks for the tip UnclePeter :)
 
UnclePeter said:
I was having the same problem, and I reset my NVRAM:

Restart your computer, but before you hear the famous Mac chord, hold Option-Command-P-R until the chord chimes TWICE (it takes about 10 seconds for the second chime to happen.) Then release Op-Cmd-P-R.

It worked perfectly -- now my screen doesn't dim until it's supposed to. How nice.

Peter
Click to expand...

Do you use the same combination of keys to reset the battery charge indicator thingy?

Had some problems with my battery, and was advised by someone in here, to press a series of keys at startup. Don't remember what the keys were, hence the question.

This might be why my dim setting works.
 
When I reset my NVRAM the other day the battery wasn't charging at first. It would recognize it as plugged in, it just wasn't charging. So, perhaps it does have something to do with the battery.

Anyways, I thought I would follow up and say that while resetting the NVRAM fixed the dimming problem, after about a day the problem was back. I'll likely try again, but I have a feeling some machines are just stuck with this bug.
 
some command line stuff to check

open up Terminal.app and type "pmset -g". this will display power settings for the current power config (ac/battery/ups).
check to see that halfdim is set to 0.
in order to change settings, you must have admin privledges.
try "sudo pmset -a halfdim 0"
type "man pmset" for further info
 
I checked the halfdim setting in Terminal and it shows as 0

I guess this is a problem for Apple to fix
 
Screen dims regardless of preference settings

I reset my NVRAM and posted a response awhile back about it working, but the display dimming problem recurred after a day or so. It is the most annoying thing, working with large databases, doing statistics while looking at the Stata manual, reading a document, etc. But the worst one is when trying to watch your screensaver during a long lecture (I have it set to show me the last 12 months of photos in iPhoto, what a nice feature) and it dims all the time. Argh.

APPLE, ARE YOU LISTENING?

(Where would be the best place to post a complaint/bugfix request?)

Just to reiterate:

1) Regardless of the "Automatically reduce the brightness before sleep" setting, the display dims after a few minutes of inactivity.
2) Resetting NVRAM on restart works temporarily (sometimes.)
3) In Terminal, typing "pmset -g" shows that the variable "halfdim" is set to 0.

Best,
Peter
 
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