How does screen brightness exactly work?

[davesurfer]

I've found the screen brightness options to be a bit confusing. There's like at least 2 places to adjust brightness settings. The first one is in Control Panel/Power Options where I can drag the screen brightness up and down, the second is swiping from the right and tapping the "Screen" icon and dragging that up and down. Now I can also swipe from the right, go to PC Settings/PC Devices/ Power and sleep/Brightness and toggle "Adjust my screen brightness automatically".

I want my screen to be adjusted automatically, but it's not doing it. Also why do I have the ability and increase and decrease the screen brightness when it's set to adjust automatically? It should not allow me to adjust the brightness automatically unless I turn off the automatic adjusting. So I'm confused, there's not difference when I enable the "Adjust my screen brightness automatically" as it doesn't do anything, and I still have to override the settings by dragging the brightness up and down myself. So how does this work? Is this a glitch I'm experiencing? Thanks!!

 

[anon(7901790)]

I just enabled mine to auto adjust and it works fine. To test the auto adjust, cover the front facing camera with your thumb, wait about 2 or so seconds and you should see the screen auto dim. If you do it I a fairly bright lit area, you should see a dramatic effect. As for being able to adjust brightness in two different places. That is because the first one is if you are in standard desktop mode the other is for if you are in Metro mode (which is what the device boots too, unless you change it). As to why, some people like to keep a constant brightness and don't want it to adjust automatically such as using it to give a presentation. Does that make sense?

 

[davesurfer]

I just enabled mine to auto adjust and it works fine. To test the auto adjust, cover the front facing camera with your thumb, wait about 2 or so seconds and you should see the screen auto dim. If you do it I a fairly bright lit area, you should see a dramatic effect. As for being able to adjust brightness in two different places. That is because the first one is if you are in standard desktop mode the other is for if you are in Metro mode (which is what the device boots too, unless you change it). As to why, some people like to keep a constant brightness and don't want it to adjust automatically such as using it to give a presentation. Does that make sense?

It makes sense but it's much quicker to use the swipe and drag the screen brightness down than to go into the control panel, power settings to do this when in desktop mode.

The auto adjust doesn't work. I've turned my brightness to max and it doesn't dim in a pitch black room or putting my finger over the camera. And now I see that when I go into the metro settings the "Adjust my screen brightness automatically" option is greyed out. Why is it greyed out now?

 

[anon(7901790)]

That's odd. Did you try to turn it on? Mine looked grayed out, but allowed me to turn it on anyway. Also, did you install all of the updates after you purchased it? I may be a driver problem, if so, you can try to get updated drivers.

 

[davesurfer]

That's odd. Did you try to turn it on? Mine looked grayed out, but allowed me to turn it on anyway. Also, did you install all of the updates after you purchased it? I may be a driver problem, if so, you can try to get updated drivers.

Did all the updates, keep checking daily, did the firmware update the other week. So this is weird, after rebooting several times now I was able to slide the toggle for the automatically adjust brightness! And now it works! Maybe because I was adjusting the brightness myself it turned it off? Maybe I shouldn't adjust the brightness myself when it's on the automatic adjustment.

 

[anon(7901790)]

Did all the updates, keep checking daily, did the firmware update the other week. So this is weird, after rebooting several times now I was able to slide the toggle for the automatically adjust brightness! And now it works! Maybe because I was adjusting the brightness myself it turned it off? Maybe I shouldn't adjust the brightness myself when it's on the automatic adjustment.

Cool beans. Hmmm... Your suspicion that it wasn't adjusting automatically seems plausible. The manual is designed to override the auto. I was kind of wondering the same thing myself. But the fact that it was grayed out is weird. Regardless of whether or not you used the manual adjustment, the auto adjust should not have been grayed out. At any rate, as saying goes, "Now that you got it working, leave it alone!" :-D

 

[QuentinJ]

Just FYI (At least on SP1 & SP2) - you can adjust brightness with the keyboard by pressing "Fn + Del" or "Fn + Backspace" to increase or decrease brightness respectively

 

[davesurfer]

Cool beans. Hmmm... Your suspicion that it wasn't adjusting automatically seems plausible. The manual is designed to override the auto. I was kind of wondering the same thing myself. But the fact that it was grayed out is weird. Regardless of whether or not you used the manual adjustment, the auto adjust should not have been grayed out. At any rate, as saying goes, "Now that you got it working, leave it alone!" :-D

I know right?! I wish I could leave it alone. But the automatic brightness control doesn't seem to go as low as I want it. When I'm in the bedroom at night and it's practically pitch black I have to manually override the brightness control and bring it down the lowest value. Then the next day, when I turn on my SP3 it stays at the lowest value even when in broad daylight

 

[anon(7901790)]

Update: I just got a firmware update along with some other updates and now my auto brightness doesn't work. *sigh* So tell me again what you did to get it to work?