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What Screen Brightness are people using?

T

torana355

macrumors 68040
Original poster
I just upgraded to a M4 Air from a 2018 Air and while the screen is a little brighter then the old machine I'm finding I still need to have it set at 70 percent or higher. I read some posts of people running at 30 percent brightness which I find crazy as it is very dim at that level.
 
100% brightness on MacBook Air was not enough for me, so I returned it, and since then I traveled with my MacBook Pro 16″ despite its weight.

I use an app on my MPB, which unlocks the full brightness, which otherwise macOS only uses for HDR content.

My setting during the day is 75% to 87,5%, or step 12 to 14 of the 16 steps of the brightness indicator. And I do not use dark mode.
 
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40%ish seems to work the vast majority of the time. It depends a lot on your environment and preferences though, it doesn't really matter what everyone else uses.
 
just under 50%, but if the site i'm using is in blinding light mode it will be turned down even more
 
Last edited:
torana355 said:
I just upgraded to a M4 Air from a 2018 Air and while the screen is a little brighter then the old machine I'm finding I still need to have it set at 70 percent or higher. I read some posts of people running at 30 percent brightness which I find crazy as it is very dim at that level.
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I'm usually around 40% brightness. Seldom ever over 50.
 
torana355 said:
I just upgraded to a M4 Air from a 2018 Air and while the screen is a little brighter then the old machine I'm finding I still need to have it set at 70 percent or higher. I read some posts of people running at 30 percent brightness which I find crazy as it is very dim at that level.
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From what I’ve read, the ideal brightness for eye comfort is whatever level renders pure white at around the same brightness as a piece of white paper held up to the screen. So basically you’re using the backlight to simulate reading on paper in ambient light.

I have that same M4 Air, and in most normal indoor lighting situations I find that a setting of around 50% (8/16 clicks) or less will get me to a comforable place.

Also, if I’m just writing text, I will often dial the brightness down even more and then in real time see (with coconutBattery) my power consumption plummet and battery time remaining skyrocket. At maybe 30% brightness, which is enough to see what I’m writing, the wattage will drop to like 2.5 watts, which is nuts.
 
torana355 said:
I just upgraded to a M4 Air from a 2018 Air and while the screen is a little brighter then the old machine I'm finding I still need to have it set at 70 percent or higher. I read some posts of people running at 30 percent brightness which I find crazy as it is very dim at that level.
Click to expand...
100% is not the maximum brightness when you have auto brightness enabled. If you go to Settings > Displays, set the display to max brightness and then disable auto brightness, you'll see the brightness slowly increase to the actual max brightness. If you really want to see the absolute maximum brightness, also be sure to disable TrueTone and Night Shift.
 
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Usually set to auto. So at night with low and warm LED ambient lighting, the MBP display appears to be about 60%.

That's with True Tone on and in dark mode.
 
I used to be there person at 100% brightness but in the past year I've noticed that my eyes get sensitive when it is too bright. I have since put it on auto brightness
 
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