Why Does My iPhone Screen Keep Dimming? 3 Easy Fixes
iPhone devices are equipped with a light sensor that adjusts the brightness of your phone screen based on the ambient light in your surroundings. So, you may ask yourself why does my brightness keep going down? For instance, when you are in a dimly lit room, the brightness of the screen will decrease to protect your eyes from eye strain. On the other hand, if you’re out on a sunny day, the brightness will be near maximum to help you see the screen clearly. However, sometimes, the iPhone will change the brightness when you don’t actually need it.
If this happens to your iPhone constantly, don’t worry. There are a few solutions that can solve this issue quickly. You can manually control the iPhone screen brightness and change the settings so you won’t need to deal with automatic brightness changes ever again. In this article, we have provided step-by-step guides to fix the problem and prevent it from happening again.
3 Ways to Prevent iPhone Screen Dimming Randomly
1. Turn off Auto-Brightness on iPhone
The first culprit can be the auto-brightness feature. When this feature is enabled, the iPhone tries to adjust the brightness based on the amount of light it receives through the sensors. Still, based on many factors, such as the different light sources and the position of the iPhone and your hand, the sensor might dim the screen when you actually need more brightness to see.
This automatic adjustment can be annoying; therefore, you can disable auto-brightness by following these steps:
- Open the settings on your iPhone device. Scroll down and select “Accessibility”.
- Under the “Vision” category, select “Display & Text Size”
- Now scroll all the way down and find the “Auto-Brightness” setting. Simply toggle it off to disable this feature.
Note: Despite disabling auto-brightness, your iPhone can still dim your screen in certain situations. So, make sure to check the other two fixes in order to minimize the chance of encountering this problem.
2. Turn off Night Shift and True Tone
Now why does my iPhone keep dimming with Auto-Brightness off? The Auto-Brightness is not the only feature that can automatically adjust your screen brightness. So, in addition to that, you should make sure the True Tone and Night Shift toggles are off. True Tone is actually a lot like Auto-Brightness but instead of the overall brightness, it automatically adapts the colors of the iPhone display based on ambient lighting conditions. So, the iPhone can display an overall dim screen using darker colors that you might not want to deal with.
The Night Shift setting is a similar feature that shifts the colors and removes the blue lights of the iPhone’s display in order to provide a warmer feel and help you have a better night’s sleep. This change can result in an unfavorable brightness for your needs and make the screen seem a bit dimmer. That’s why we recommend turning off the Night Shift alongside the True Tone feature for the sake of having a brighter screen.
Follow these steps to disable both of these settings:
- Open the settings on your iPhone, scroll down a bit, and tap on “Display & Brightness.”
- Under the “Brightness” section, you can find “True Tone.” To turn it off, simply tap on the toggle.
- The “Night Shift” setting is under the True Tone. Tap on it to open its dedicated page
- This feature actually has two toggles: one to schedule it to activate at night based on your iPhone’s clock and one to enable it until tomorrow. Make sure both of the toggles are off.
3. Prevent Your iPhone from Overheating
In the event that your smartphone overheats, there are safety measures in place in order to cool down the device and prevent damage to the internal components. One of these measures is dimming the screen which reduces the power consumption and lowers the heat generated by the iPhone. So, one of the answers to the question “Why does my brightness keep going down” is the temperature of the device.
To prevent your iPhone from overheating, you can follow these steps:
- Close Unnecessary Apps: When you have opened multiple apps simultaneously, but they just run in the background while you’re using another app, there is a chance the iPhone will overheat and, as a result, it dim the screen.
- Don’t Put iPhone in Direct Sunlight: If it’s a hot day and the phone is under direct sunlight for a considerable amount of time, the chance of overheating is high.
- Avoid Heavy Usage: Some apps, like graphically demanding games, heavily use the resources of your iPhone. So, if you feel like the iPhone is getting warm, try to close the demanding app to cool it down.
- Use Low Power Mode: If you feel like your iPhone is going to get overheated, you can enable the low power mode to prevent it. In this mode, the iPhone limits certain features to keep the power consumption lower, but you can use the device with high brightness.
Manually Control Your iPhone Screen Brightness
Of course, when you’re not satisfied with the automatic adjustment of brightness, the best action is to control it manually. There are two ways to increase or decrease the brightness level of your iPhone screen:
Method 1
The fastest way is to open the control center of your iPhone. This can be done by just swiping down from the top right corner of your screen. Now, you can see the brightness slider of your screen. Dragging it down will bring the brightness down, and dragging it up will increase your screen brightness.
Method 2
This can be done in the settings too. Simply open the settings in your device, scroll down, and tap on “Display & Brightness”. Now you can see a slider above “True Tone”. Dragging it left will decrease the brightness and dragging it right will increase it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does my iPhone screen dim when the brightness is all the way up?
If your iPhone overheats, it will try to cool itself by dimming the screen and minimizing the power consumption. So even if the brightness is at maximum level, the device can adjust it to prevent damage to its components.
Why does my brightness keep going when auto-brightness is off?
Switching the Auto-Brightness off won’t guarantee that the brightness will stay fixed. Try disabling True Tone and Night Shift features and see if the issue is solved.
Why does my brightness keep going down on its own?
There are a few features such as Auto-Brightness and Night Shift that can lower the brightness of your iPhone screen based on the ambient light and time of the day. To stop this from happening, you need to toggle off these settings.
