Why Your Iphone Display Keeps Dimming (And How To Fix)

Does the display on your iPhone or iPad dim randomly? We’ll show you why that happens and what you can do to fix screen dimming issues on iOS and iPadOS devices.

The display on an iPhone can keep dimming for several reasons. For example, it could be due to the built-in Auto-Brightness feature in iOS or a power management setting like Auto-Lock and Low Power Mode. Here are all possible ways why the iPhone display dims and how to stop that from happening.

Turn Off Auto-Brightness

By default, your iPhone uses an accessibility feature called Auto-Brightness to automatically adjust screen brightness based on input from the device’s ambient light sensor. However, it doesn’t always do a great job in all surroundings.

If your iPhone’s display dims too much, you can choose to disable Auto-Brightness and manage brightness levels manually. To do that:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Scroll down and tap Accessibility .
3. Tap Display & Text Size .
4. Scroll down and turn off the switch next to Auto-Brightness .

1. Open your iPhone’s Control Center (swipe down from the top-right of the screen or double-click the Home button) and use the Brightness slider to increase or decrease brightness levels manually.

Extend Auto-Lock Duration

If your iPhone is on a 30-second Auto-Lock duration, the screen may appear to dim after what seems to be an annoyingly short time. To increase it:

1. Open Settings.
2. Scroll down and tap Display & Brightness .
3. Tap Auto-Lock and pick a duration of at least 1 minute or more.

Note : Avoid the larger time frames since they can adversely impact the iPhone’s battery life.

Disable Low Power Mode

Low Power Mode is an optional power management feature you can activate once your iPhone’s battery levels go below 20 percent. It curtails activities like email fetch and background refresh, dims the iPhone’s screen, and reverts the Auto-Lock duration to 30 seconds.

iOS automatically disables Low Power Mode once your iPhone recharges to at least 80 percent. However, you can turn it off whenever you want.

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Scroll down and tap Battery .
3. Turn off the switch next to Low Power Mode .

Disable Attention Awareness

If you use an iPhone X or any other Face ID -supported iOS device, a functionality called Attention Aware automatically dims your iPhone’s screen when you aren’t looking at it. If that annoys you:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Scroll down and tap Face ID & Passcode .
3. Authenticate yourself with your iPhone’s device passcode and turn off the switch next to Attention Aware Features .

Note : Turning off Attention Aware will also disable several other useful features like auto-expanding notifications and low-volume alerts.

Turn Off True Tone

If you use an iPhone 8 or a newer iOS device, a feature called True Tone will auto-adjust the display color and intensity to match the environmental lighting conditions. However, it can give off an odd dimming or shimmering effect that bothers some people. If you want to disable True Tone:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Scroll down and tap Display & Brightness .
3. Turn off the switch next to True Tone .

Disable Night Shift Feature

Another built-in iPhone feature, Night Shift, reduces blue light by warming the iPhone’s color temperature. However, it achieves that at the cost of reduced screen brightness. To disable Night Shift:

1. Open your iPhone’s Control Center.
2. Long-press the Brightness slider.
3. Disable the Night Shift icon.

If you want to configure how Night Shift works:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone and tap Display & Brightness .
2. Tap Night Shift .
3. Change the Night Shift schedule or adjust the color temperature. The less warm it’s set to, the brighter your iPhone will appear despite having the feature active.

Disable Reduce White Point

Your iPhone’s accessibility settings include an option capable of reducing the intensity of white colors. If your iPhone screen brightness appears too dim, check if the feature is active and disable it. To do that:

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
2. Go to Accessibility > Display & Text Size .
3. Scroll down and turn off the switch next to Reduce White Point .

iPhone Screen Keeps Dimming? Continue With These Fixes

If your iPhone’s display brightness keeps dimming unexpectedly despite going through the suggestions above, you might be dealing with a software-related problem that warrants further troubleshooting.

Stop Overheating Your iPhone

Did you know that if your iPhone overheats, the operating system tends to dim or shut down the display to cool down the device? Here’s what you can do to avoid ramping up the temperature:

• Avoid continuous activity that strains the smartphone—e.g., video games.
• Disable Background App Refresh for non-essential apps.
• Use a slimmer phone case.
• Minimize usage in hot environments.

Restart Your iPhone

Quickly restarting your iPhone or iPad eliminates lots of bugs and glitches causing auto-dimming and overheating issues on the iPhone.

So, go to Settings > General > Shutdown , turn off your iPhone next, and hold the Power button for 30 seconds until the device reboots.

Update Your iPhone

Early iterations of major system software releases—e.g., iOS 16.0—tend to have loads of bugs that cause problems on the iPhone.

The only way to fix them—aside from downgrading iOS —is to install newer iOS releases as soon as they become available. Visit Settings > General > Software Update and tap Download and Install to update your iPhone.

Restore iPhone Settings to Defaults

Conflicting or broken brightness settings on your iPhone is another—albeit rare—reason behind various display-related anomalies. Head over to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset > Reset All Settings to perform a settings reset and check if that makes a difference.

Reinstall Your iPhone’s System Software

If none of the fixes above help, it’s time to clean-install the iPhone’s system software . To do that, perform an offline or iCloud backup and go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Erase All Content and Settings .

Take Your iPhone to Apple

If your iPhone’s display still dims, the problem could likely be a hardware issue. Make a Genius Bar reservation and have an Apple Genius take a crack at it. However, before you do that, you might have a shot at fixing the problem yourself by installing the iPhone’s device firmware and software in DFU (Device Firmware Update) Mode .

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Passcodes suck. They take a long time to type in, it’s easy to forget them and most people probably pick something really easy to guess, which hurts their security. This is why biometric unlock methods are so popular.

All but the most inexpensive smartphones now have fingerprint scanners built-in. One little touch and your phone unlocks, which is pretty convenient. But more devices are also now using facial recognition instead since screens are getting so large. Apple is no different and offers devices that use both of these technologies to secure them. Technologies that are officially known as Face ID and Touch ID.

But how do Face ID and fingerprint scans work?

What Are Face ID & Touch ID?

The obvious answer to this question is that Face ID is a face unlock system and Touch ID is a fingerprint unlock system. Job done. End of article. Right? Well, it’s a little more complicated than that because although lots of different companies use faces and fingerprints to unlock their devices, they don’t all work in the same way.

These two biometric systems are Apple’s proprietary solutions to the biometric problem. This matters because companies like Apple feel that their approach and technology are more secure than their competition. It matters because hackers and other security specialists have managed to fool systems like these in the past.

As you’d expect, there’s a race between the creators of biometric security sensors and those who want to defeat them. You must know how the sensors on your Apple device work and what their limitations are.

How Does Face ID & Touch ID Work?

Touch ID is Apple’s most mature biometric system and you’ll find it on certain models of iPhones, iPads, and MacBook Pros. Its sensors use the sapphire crystal as the button material. This is very hard and incredibly resistant to scratches, which is why high-end smartphone cameras also use sapphire lens covers.

When you place your finger on the button, a very high-resolution image is taken of your fingertip. A proprietary software algorithm then examines the image, transforming your fingerprint into pure math. This is then compared to the stored mathematical transformation of the fingerprint that was registered when Touch ID was set up. If they match, then the device unlocks.

Face ID works in a pretty smart way as well. Many devices use a normal camera for facial recognition. It compares the photo it has on record with the one you are presenting to unlock the device. The software that does the facial matching is quite sophisticated, but many of these cameras can’t tell the difference between a photo or a mask, so they can be fooled into unlocking.

Face ID, on the other hand, makes use of a specialized TrueDepth camera to create a very detailed depth map of your face. One with over 30 000 points. It combines this with an infrared image of your face to create a facial profile. The neural net machine learning hardware components of modern Apple mobile device processors make this level of sophistication possible.

So how secure are these technologies and are they good enough for you to trust?

General Biometric Security Flaws

First of all, some security vulnerabilities apply to biometric systems in general. The biggest problem with using an aspect of your biology to unlock something is that you can’t change it. If someone managed to make a perfect copy of your fingerprint or face, they could unlock anything. If someone figures out a password or passcode, just change it.

This sort of thing has happened in the past and the way that biometric sensors have got around it is by becoming more detailed and looking at multiple aspects of your biology. For example, finer details of your fingerprints or the presence of body heat. Those who want to defeat these systems have to get better at replicating your biology, which is impractical for the average hacker at a certain point.

The biggest weakness of biometric systems is a pretty simple one. Someone can simply take your finger or face and force you to unlock your device. That’s different from a password or code which you can “forget” or otherwise withhold. We’ll deal with this scenario at the end of the article.

How Secure Are Face ID & Touch ID?

This is a bit of a loaded question since that depends on what your definition of ‘secure’ is. Usually, the security of systems like these is expressed as the odds of someone randomly beating them. That’s the “brute force” method of cracking a digital lock. For Touch ID there’s only a 1 in 500,000 chance of someone’s fingerprint being similar enough to yours that Touch ID will be fooled.

Of course, that’s very different compared to someone making an impression of your fingerprint or creating fake ones from a scan. Then again, how likely that is to happen depends on who you are and if someone would be motivated to take this extreme path. If you’re a VIP who draws this sort of attention, you shouldn’t be using biometrics, since they aren’t secure enough at that risk level in our opinion.

Face ID is more secure from a brute force perspective according to Apple’s numbers. With a one-in-a-million chance of a random person looking enough like you. Identical twins are perhaps the exception here. So what about photographs or masks that replicate your face? Face ID has countermeasures for this. As mentioned above, photos won’t work since the camera can sense depth. It uses neural net technology to also mitigate against the use of masks.

There are no numbers to tell us how effective this is, but once again for the average user, no one is going to spend thousands or even millions of dollars creating technology to defeat Face ID. If you’re the president of a country, don’t use biometric locks.

Activating The iOS Biometric Killswitch

Now only one issue remains. What if someone is in a position to force you into unlocking your phone? They just have to point it at your face or put your finger on it, after all. If you think you may be entering this situation, you can simply click the on/off button five times and biometrics will be disabled in favor of a passcode.

On the iPhone 8 and up you need to squeeze the side button and either of the volume buttons. These methods could be different when you read this, so be sure you look up the biometric killswitch method for your specific iOS device.

In short: Face ID and Touch ID are plenty secure for most people, but not for people who need military-grade security. If you are however very paranoid, use a six-digit passcode instead.

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