I’ve been noticing lately that on my 13″ Unibody Macbook the screen brightness fluctuates at times. It doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen. MacFixIt has confirmed this issue and details that it happens because of the ambient light sensor that’s placed at the top of the screen (if you place your hand over the iSight camera you’ll see your screen dim). Apparently the sensor is overly sensitive and this issue can probably be fixed with some simple driver software updates. No report on when/if that update will be released…
UPDATE: Be sure to read the first two comments below for a fix and/or clarification on this post
6 Comments
Hey, came to your blog via google. I was finding the same thing happening and guessed that there was an ambient light sensor, like on the iPhone, but I hadn’t seen Apple document it anywhere, either on their site or in the manuals so was a bit like ‘wtf?’.
You can turn it off though if you go System Prefs>Displays and untick the ‘automatically adjust brightness’ box, you’ve probably worked this out by now though!
Thanks for the tip Phelim! I was actually trying to point out that the screen brightness fluctuation was overly sensitive and was changing when it shouldn’t. It’s a cool feature that I actually appreciate, but it doesn’t seem to work very well sometimes.
Now that I’ve owned the MacBook for a longer period of time, I think that the real issue stems from the location of the sensor. Having the sensor at the top of the screen like it is on the MacBook doesn’t lend itself to accurately sensing the amount of light in the current surroundings. For example, positioning the screen at different angles will change the brightness of the screen, even though the environment lighting hasn’t changed at all (especially if you’re using the MacBook on your lap).
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment. I appreciate it.
Thanks, this has been driving me batty. It wasn’t a huge deal as much as it was annoying.
Thank you so much for this blog. I just got my new macbook pro and I was concerned about the fluctuations. I tested out covering my camera, and my screen dimmed. I am no longer concerned that something is wrong with my new computer. Thanks so much.
I had the same problem and was like ‘wtf’? but followed your tip and it is working perfectly now.
The screen fluctuations were very annoying. I could see a long hassle to find an intermittent connector. Thanks for the correct explanation!