Take Control of Your Smartphone’s Screen Brightness

Smartphones are pretty smart, but they’re not perfect. While companies have managed to outsource many small, menial, and repetitive tasks to these pocket computers, sometimes the phones just get it wrong. That includes automatically setting the display brightness.

You’ve probably noticed that your iPhone or Android will adjust the brightness of its screen throughout the day. Maybe this works out for you: If you walk outside on a sunny day, for example, the brightness will jump up to compensate. When you go back inside, it’ll come down to what it thinks is a comfortable brightness level.

This system works well during ideal conditions, but things can quickly fall apart. One of the trickiest situations is when you are outside, but you happen to catch a piece of shade. If the light sensor in your phone recognizes the shade, but not the other sunny areas in your surroundings, it may start to drop the brightness of your screen, making it very hard to see.

On the flip side, maybe you’re inside, but your phone’s light sensor is in range of a bright light source, like an LED lamp or sunlight through a window. Even if your actual phone screen isn’t hard to see, this can make your brightness skyrocket, to the point where it may be uncomfortable to see—and almost assuredly taxing on your battery.

If you want to take control of your smartphone’s battery, it isn’t hard—but it can be a bit hidden:

• If you have an iPhone, you’ll find the option in Settings -> Accessibility -> Display & Text Size. Turn off the toggle next to “Auto-Brightness.”
• On an Android device like Google Pixel or Samsung Galaxy, go to Settings -> Display, then turn off the toggle next to “Adaptive brightness.”

Be aware that by disabling the feature, your phone will “remember” the last brightness setting you manually chose. That might give you trouble if you look at your phone in a dark room after having pushed the brightness up outside, so consider adjusting the brightness ahead of time.