(Quick note: iOS 11 and this is still broken.)
I know that this is a first-world problem, but it’s a really annoying one, it’s been around for years, the fix is simple and Apple missed the opportunity to do so in their recent update from iOS 10 to iOS 11. My hope in writing this is that enough people — more influential than I— will see it, share it and bring it to Apple’s attention.
Context: What is Auto-Brightness?
According to Apple’s Technical Support Article, Adjust the brightness on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch:
iOS devices use an ambient light sensor to adjust brightness levels based on the light conditions around you. The sensor lowers brightness in dark locations and raises brightness in light locations. This is a great feature. It’s what allows you to unlock your phone as soon as the movie is over without blinding yourself. The phone is smart enough to recognize that you’re in a dim room and so it lowers the screen brightness automatically.
When I meet people who complain that their iPhone battery doesn’t last through the day, the most common culprit is that they’ve disabled the auto-brightness feature. “Turn this on and leave it on,” I tell them. “You will see an immediate improvement in your phone’s battery life.” And it’s usually true because the screen is the phone’s single greatest battery-drain. If you let the phone decide how bright the screen needs to be, it will take you less than a day to get used to the dynamic brightness and you’ll enjoy better battery life forever.
Why would you ever turn it off?
The article continues:
The auto-brightness feature is on by default. When auto-brightness is on, you’ll notice that your device’s brightness slider moves according to changing light conditions. As I explained, the benefits of auto-brightness are wonderful… so much so, in fact, that Apple sets it to be on by default… this is just the way the phone is supposed to behave. So, why would anyone ever turn it off?
I turn it off all the time.
I like to watch movies and TV shows at the end of the day, after I get into bed but before I go to sleep. And I like video to look good… I watch on an iPad Pro which has a fantastic Retina display, wide color gamut, yadda yadda yadda… this screen looks good. But, with auto-brightness turned on, the image is dimmer than it should be, so, when I’m watching movies, I pause, jump into Control Center and slide the brightness up to 100%.
And here’s the problem: manually adjusting the screen brightness disables the auto-brightness feature and there is no correspondingly simple way to re-enable it. And, to add insult to injury, instead of fixing this annoyance, the iOS 11 update makes the problem even worse. Consider the following, taken from the same Tech Support Article:
In iOS 11, you can turn auto-brightness on or off in Settings > General > Accessibility > Display Accommodations. In iOS 10 and , go to Settings > Display & Brightness. In other words, the annoying fix, which took three taps in iOS 10, now requires five. Apple has taken a bad situation and made it worse.
OK, big mouth, enough complaining. What’s the fix?
I’m glad you asked; the fix is simple.
Open Control Center and force-touch on the Screen Brightness slider (or long-touch on the iPad). You’ll get the additional controls seen in this screenshot. As you can infer from my fancy notation (thanks, iOS 11 Markup and Apple Pencil!), there is some available space for an additional control. I’m no graphic designer, but I bet Apple could find one to create a cool, circular icon that would get the job done.
To sum up
Again, here’s the issue: there is a simple way to turn auto-brightness off in Control Center (by simply adjusting the screen brightness slider), but there is no correspondingly simple way to tell iOS that you want it to take over control of the brightness again. A single toggle in Control Center is all that is needed.
If you agree, please share.