We’ve made great strides in adjusting the brightness of our iPhones to strike a balance between readability (especially in bright sunlight) and battery life. Modern iPhones and iPads have displays that are bright enough to remain clearly visible in the summer while consuming much less power despite their larger size.
But brightness isn’t everything. iOS/iPadOS typically adjusts a device’s screen brightness based on its analysis of the lighting conditions you’re in. This isn’t always what you want. You can turn off the default settings and use manual controls to keep the brightness at your desired level.
Check out these tips to save battery life on your iPhone or iPad.
Adjust brightness manually
Even if Auto-Brightness is turned on, you can still swipe up to reveal Control Center and drag the brightness slider up or down. This will override the current setting until your iPhone locks after a specified time or you press the Side or Top button. (You can adjust the auto-lock duration in Settings > Display and brightness.) You can also go to Settings > Display and brightness to access the cursor there.
If you have an iPhone or iPad with True Tone, the Display & Brightness settings also show a True Tone switch. True Tone uses multiple sensors to determine ambient lighting and then adjust the hue and intensity. This can make images, videos, and flat colors on your screen appear visually identical in different lighting conditions. If you find this distracting, you can turn it off. (True Tone appears on iPhone 8 and later, iPhone SE 2nd generation and later, and many iPad models.)
You can manually adjust brightness from Control Center (left) or choose to turn off automatic brightness adjustment completely (right).
You can manually adjust brightness from Control Center (left) or choose to turn off automatic brightness adjustment completely (right).
Foundry
You can manually adjust brightness from Control Center (left) or choose to turn off automatic brightness adjustment completely (right).
Foundry
Foundry
Turn off auto-brightness
You may find that having your iPhone or iPad automatically change the brightness level is less useful than letting you set a fixed brightness and adjust it to your liking. If that’s the case, go to Settings > Accessibility > Text display and size and disable Auto Brightness.
Apple uses Auto-Brightness to help manage your device’s battery life. After you turn this feature off, you may notice faster battery consumption during normal usage. You can check how your battery consumption changes over the course of a day using the graph below. Settings > Battery.
Ask Mac 911
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