Phone Brightness Keeps Going Down or Up? Here’s Why

Does your phone’s brightness keep going down or up?

A common question posed by our readers is why does their phone’s brightness go down during the night or increase during the day even though they don’t touch the brightness level.

In this article, we will explain the reason why this issue happens and how you can fix it in a few steps.

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Why does my brightness keep going down or up?

Most smartphones nowadays have an Auto Brightness feature that automatically dims or brightens the phone’s screen depending on the lighting of your surrounding environment.

If your phone’s brightness keeps going down, it is because your surrounding is dark such as during the night. Your phone automatically reduces the brightness to reduce the strain on your eyes.

Similarly, your phone will automatically increase the screen’s brightness during the day so that you can clearly see the screen especially when you’re in direct sunlight.

The auto-brightness feature also helps in reducing your battery consumption and improving the long-term performance of your device.

This is the main reason why your screen’s brightness keeps on changing. To avoid this from happening, you can disable the auto-brightness feature in your phone’s settings.

The next section will show you how to turn off auto brightness on iPhone, iPad, or Android devices.

How to turn off auto brightness on iOS (iPhone/iPad)

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.

2. Go to Accessibility.

3. Tap on Display & Text Size.

4. Scroll to the end and toggle off Auto-Brightness.

By disabling Auto-Brightness, your iPhone’s screen will no longer dim or brighten unless you adjust it manually.

How to disable auto brightness on Android

1. Go to Settings.

2. Tap on Display.

3. Toggle off Auto brightness.

By turning off this option, your Android device will not adjust the screen’s brightness automatically. Instead, you have to increase or reduce it manually.

Fix iPhone brightness changing when auto-brightness is turned off

Does your phone’s brightness keep on going down or up even though the auto brightness feature is turned off? Here are some ways to fix it.

1. Disable Night Shift on iPhone

Another reason for your screen’s brightness dimming automatically is due to the Night Shift feature in iOS.

It automatically changes the color of your display to warmer colors at night. Doing so reduces the blue light emitted by your iPhone’s screen and helps prevent your eyes from straining.

To disable Night Shift, go to Settings.
Tap on Display & Brightness.
Tap the Night Shift option.
Turn off the toggles next to Scheduled and Manually Enable Until Tomorrow options.

2. Turn off True Tone

Another feature that could be causing this issue is the True Tone feature available on iPhone 8 and later models.

This feature automatically changes your iPhone’s display color based on the lighting conditions of your surrounding.

To disable True Tone on iPhone:

Go to Settings.
Tap on Display & Brightness.
Toggle off the True Tone option.

3. Disable the Attention-Aware feature

Attention-Aware is a feature present in devices with Face ID that automatically dims your iPhone’s screen if it detects that you’re not looking at it.

This feature is designed to help preserve your battery life and improve the display’s long-term performance.

If your phone’s brightness keeps going down, then it could be due to this feature. Here’s how to turn it off.

Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
Go to Accessibility.
Tap on the Face ID & Attention option.
Turn off the toggle for Attention Aware Features.

4. Turn off Low Power Mode

When you’re running low on battery, you can turn on the Low Power Mode to help preserve it by reducing background tasks like downloads, mail sync, and more.

When Low Power Mode is turned on, your device will dim if you’re not using it for 30 seconds and then automatically gets locked. It does this to reduce battery consumption.

It could be that you have enabled Low Power Mode which is why your iPhone’s screen keeps on dimming. To fix it, you have to disable Low Power Mode. Here’s how:

Go to the Settings app.
Tap on Battery.
Toggle off Low Power Mode.

Wrapping Up

When your phone’s brightness keeps on going down or up automatically, it can quickly become very annoying. The main reason for this issue is that you may have turned on the Auto-Brightness feature.

This feature automatically adjusts your screen’s brightness depending on the surrounding lighting. By turning it off in Settings, the problem will get fixed.

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