How To Disable Auto Brightness in Windows 8

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When I installed the Windows 8 Consumer Preview on my Mac, I noticed one HUGE issue that I just couldn’t deal with; the screen would keep dimming down no matter how many times I would set the brightness to 100. Apparently, in anticipation of putting Windows 8 on tablets with light sensors, Microsoft has added the feature of auto brightness just like they have with their phone devices. So, I had to find out how to disable it before I threw the computer across the room. Have the same troubles? There’s help.

I. Disable Auto Brightness

1. Head to the Desktop of your PC by pushing Windows Key + D or clicking on the Desktop icon in the Start Menu.

2. On the bottom right of the screen, locate the battery icon.

3. Right click the battery icon and select More Power Options.

4. Select Change Plan Settings on the currently selected profile (by default it’s set to Balanced).

5. Click the Advanced Power Settings link.

6. Scroll down to Display > Enable Adaptive Brightness.

7. Change it to Off for either or both “Plugged In” and “On Battery”.

86 thoughts on “How To Disable Auto Brightness in Windows 8”

  2. David

    Yes thanks, always a mystery how far down something is buried in new versions of Windows. Also a mystery why nobody that tests Windows is ever annoyed by that feature, I’ve hated automatic screen dimming on almost every device I’ve ever had… Dell notebooks have had that for years and the old Windows Tablets, the Compaq pocket iPaq, all annoyingly would dim the screen at the worst times!

    The only time I think auto screen dimming would be nice in on my Kindle Fire (and only at night time hours). But they removed that feature for a manual control panel. I’ve never seen it live on Kindle so maybe they got rid of it because too many people told Amazon it was annoying and they listened.

    Reply
  3. awaizy

    Wow, thanks. The function works so horribly that it just got annoying. My screen was simply changing brightness on a dime and I was in a room where the lighting was not changing whatsoever.

    Reply
    1. Galleon Dragon

      The light sensor on my VAIO laptop was near the joint where the screen and keyboard meet. And it’s a touch screen. So whenever I touched the screen I cast a shadow on the sensor and the screen dimmed. It was absolutely maddening. I would never have looked in the VAIO control center if it weren’t for this thread. Thx to all for your info.

      Reply
  4. awiklendt

    thanks for the info …but… all my power profiles for display’s ‘enable adaptive brightness’ are set to ‘off’ and the screen still wavers in brightness. when i use my function key to turn down brightness, it works while i’m dimming, but then automatically gets bright again. are there any other tricks? i’m using SVE14a15fg from sony (http://www.sony-asia.com/support/product/sve14a15fg); I have all the win7 drivers but not sure which ones to install for this feature. Anyone have any ideas?

    Reply
    1. Corey

      2 weeks later, but I might have a solution for you if you haven’t found one yet. if you have cleartype enabled, it might make the screen look brighter, and you’ll notice it mostly when viewing black text on a white background (like this website). It should be fairly straightforward to disable, just search “cleartype” in settings, then go to adjust cleartype text and uncheck the box that enables it.

      hope this helps!

      Reply
      1. awiklendt

        Hi Corey, thanks for your input. I did figure it out and, my bad, I should have posted my solution here sooner than now.

        It wasn’t Microsoft settings, it wasn’t Intel’s integrated graphics driver, it wasn’t even AMD’s dedicated graphics software – it was Sony. Sony’s “Vaio Control Centre” under “image quality”. There is a toggle for ‘display brightness’ for automatic adjustment.

        So there you have it – if anyone else is having troubles, check laptop brand-specific software.

        Reply
        2. Trev

          Many many thanks. This was driving me crazy. Could only get a few seconds at a brightness above 30% on my s13p even when plugged in. Can’t understand why Sony does this!

          Reply
        4. KleppMelk

          Thank you thank you THANK YOU! I tried every tip I could find to keep my monitor from dimming, but nothing worked until I found this comment. Gawd, it was driving me crazy.

          Reply
        5. KleppMelk

          Thank you thank you THANK YOU! I tried every tip I could find to keep my monitor from dimming, but nothing worked until I found this comment. Gawd, it was driving me crazy.

          Reply
        14. bilde2910

          Can’t believe it’d be that hard to turn off auto brightness. Tried everything, but nothing worked until I saw your comment. Thank you very much for helping me solve a still relevant problem for VAIO PCs!

          Reply
        16. anna

          Thanks soooo much, man !!! I have thought that I definately saw it before in somewhere but I couldnt remember in anyway until you said that !!!

          Reply
        17. Rikstah

          Just had to say thank you for this comment, i have a sony vaio and the auto brightness was driving me insane

          Reply
      2. AkahaiAni

        Thank you! Finally! I was going nuts and all the resolutions I found were only suggesting adjusting the Adaptive Brightness which was not working. I didn’t even think to look in the VAIO Control Center. Finally I can see my without straining my eyes!

        Reply
      2. Brandon G

        I found the “Power” settings in the Intel Media Pane, however the only place where I could take off the Power Saving Settings was if it was running under battery. On “Plugged In” I changed the setting for maximum performance. I don’t believe it changed anything though.

        Reply
      3. ethesx

        This worked for me as well for Sony Vaio S15. We had actually troubleshot this with Sony tech support and came up with a backlight issue since there is also a setting in the Vaio Control Panel which controls auto brightness. This was disabled, so it appears that Intel’s software is overriding this.

        Thanks so much! You’ve helped me to avoid a return/replacement and going through the frustration of the same issue on the replacement laptop!

        Reply
    2. Brandon G

      I also am having the same issue on a Dell XPS 17, Windows 8 native settings for auto adjust are turned off. I could not find any settings in the intel Pane that would change such settings.

      Reply
    3. Patricia

      Thank you SO MUCH I needed this <3 I was about to blow a gasket because I'd just got my laptop back from Geek Squad repair for an issue with cracked screen bezel causing the screen to blank out and I thought the flickering was related to that, and that either they didn't fix it or UPS were being dicks and juggling my laptop with a chainsaw or something!! Didn't realize it was a software issue, FINALLY got it to work <3 I love you!
      and so should Geek Squad and UPS lol

      Reply
  10. Michele

    Thanks so much for this solution for Sony products. My new Vaio S does not have the “enable adaptive brightness” setting. Going to the Sony Vaio control center and making the change was the trick! The screen dimming was completely maddening!!! I spent hours trying to figure out how to change it. I wish I found this site first!

    Reply
      1. Blabla

        Go to the VAIO control center and select screen quality (my laptop’s language is not set to English so I don’t know what it would say on yours exactly), then the first slider you’ll see is for adaptive brightness. Set to “off”.

        However, on mine (also an S), it STILL auto-adapts the brightness whenever the laptop isn’t plugged in, and it is driving me raving mad. It is so unbelievably annoying, and performs like sh-t anyway, always confusing its own light with the surroundings …: Whenever the screen turns white, it starts upping the brightness even further.

        Reply
        1. rinnn

          i’m having the same problem. Also an S too. since this post is 5 months ago, may i ask if you had this figured out yet? it’s driving me insane here 🙁

          Reply
  16. Nat

    Thanks a bunch! My tablet PC kept suddenly going to 100% when I had it turned down because it’s dark in the room. Kept blinding me! Disabling it makes using the computer not hurt my eyes so much.

    Reply
  17. Sarah Karmazin

    I followed the instructions above, but it has not resolved the problem. I see comments below about sony vaio control center and cleartype, but I dont know what any of that means. Can someone provide me very simple, step by step directions on how to turn the wavering brightness off in all necessary places so it goes away for good? I own a new samsung series 7 chronos with windows 8. I would like it to be as bright as possible (i have the brightness at 100%).

    Reply
    1. Mike

      You have to go to your start menu, where your button icons are that’s you click to start a program. Then you type control at that screen to do a search. Select Vaio control center. There is a toggle switch at the top for display brightness, switch it off. Then back out and adjust the brightness with the FN key and F5 or F6 and it will now stay where you set it

      Reply
  20. JoieNsk

    Thank you very much! On my Sony laptop it worked differently, there was no “adaptive brightness” option, but there was an option to change battery settings and actually SAVE them – not like when you do it through Control Panel. Thank you very much, it was so irritating, – not been able to see anything on the screen. Now everything is working :)))

    Reply
  22. JG

    I have an Acer laptop and I’ve had the same problem!! It was the brightness control on the graphics card that was low.

    Reply
  23. Eduardo Kato

    Already did the main post,but it still keeps dimming(yes i saved the changes)

    Model:
    Dell Inspiron 14z
    Windows 8

    What to do?(the fun thing is:it starded doing this,then stopped,then now it came back)

    Reply
  29. fitifititis

    I followed the above guide and it din’t work. What DID work however was uninstalling ASUS Power4Gear Hybrid. Maybe it had some option to turn off auto-brightness there, but who needs the extra crapware on his computer anyway?

    Reply
    1. dreaddead1

      Unfortunately having disabled nVidia stereoscopic and streamer services, as was pointed out in the ROG forums, then uninstalled Power4Gear Hybrid. The auto dimming was gone but only for about a week. :

      Reply
    2. AGreenhill

      Uninstalling the ASUS Power4Gear Hybrid didn’t work for me… all I have now from Asus is the “ATK Package”… and I’m not sure anything in there can affect this behavior…

      These automatic “convenience” tricks are so stupid…

      Reply
      1. fitifititis

        You have to follow the above guide AND unistall Power4Gear Hybrid. And then restart your laptop. I think that was all i did that disabled automatic brightness (I tried many things at the time, though most useless I think). I haven’t seen the brightness adjust on its own ever since I wrote the first comment.

        Reply
  32. JSuze

    Thanks so much! I agree that it shouldn’t be so difficult to fix this issue, (which I never had until I installed Windows 8)

    Reply
  33. William Ashby

    Thank you for the info.. I was ready to through my laptop out of the window.. It is ridicules that Windows 8 defaults in this mode… You saved me time and money.

    Reply
  34. tanyy

    Finally my problem solved… Thank You very much…
    I used to work in this stupid ‘darkness’ screen even I have switch on my light.

    Reply
  35. Jagadish

    If you still not able to solve screen brightness automatically increase to maximum issue. Try the to disable automatically toggle between normal mode and gaming mode. If you use Bitdefender and you set it in autopilot mode, this can cause your computer automatically toggle between normal mode and gaming mode. To disable automatically toggle between normal mode and gaming mode, do the following:
    1. Open Bitdefender
    2. Click Tools
    3. Click Profiles
    4. Under Movie Profile, click configure and uncheck Adjust power plan and visual settings for movie
    5. Under Game Profile, click configure and uncheck Adjust power plan and visual settings for games

    Reply
  36. Saroj

    it really worked…i was really upset i tried everything but was not able to get through to disable auto brightness…but now its now..thanks for the help

    Reply
  38. Anthony Palacin

    Thanks for this post. Legitimately stopped me from calling Toshiba tech supports (the next tab open that I was going to use if this solution did not work). It’s really dumb that by default the max brightness is at 30% for both plugged in and not. Make sure to change that setting as well as the auto-adjust if you want to manually control the brightness settings.

    Reply
  39. Steven Paul

    THANK YOU! The auto-dim feature was pretty annoying. There should be an easier way to do that, too. Ridiculous that you have to go through 4 steps (including an “Advanced Settings”) just to turn off auto-dim.

    Reply

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