How to Automatically Change Brightness in Mac?

Working with correct brightness of the display is very important to protect your eyes. By default, you can use F1 or F2 keys on your Mac’s keyboard to manually adjust brightness of the screen. However, this will be inconvenient to frequently adjust the brightness whenever you change the place or working environment (like day or nighttime). Good thing is that Mac offers multiple options to automatically adjust the brightness of display based on the ambience. Also, lean how to automatically adjust brightness and colors in Windows PC.

1. Auto Adjust Brightness

• Click the Apple logo and go to “System Settings…” menu.
• When you are in Settings app, go to “Displays” section from the left sidebar.
• Turn the switch against “Automatically adjust brightness” option showing just below the “Brightness” option.
• You will instantly notice the display automatically adjust the brightness for your current ambience.

Note that the “Automatically adjust brightness” option will work only if your Mac has ambient lighting sensor. On some Mac models, you may see the options shows as “Ambient light compensation” instead of “Automatically adjust brightness”.

2. Auto Adjust Display Colors

Similar to brightness, you can also enable auto adjustment of display colors based on the ambience you work.

• Go to “Apple logo > System Settings… > Displays” section.
• Turn the switch against “True Tone” option.

Mac will automatically apply the required color profile for your system. However, you can click on the dropdown against “Color Profile” option and select different profile to use.

3. Use Night Light for Warmer Display

The last option is to use night shift setting so that the display will show warmer colors when you work in dark environment.

• Go to “Apple logo > System Settings… > Displays” section.
• Scroll down to bottom on the right pane and click on “Night Shift…” button.

• A pop-up will appear and turn the switch against “Turn on until tomorrow” option. this will apply the night light till tomorrow and the display will turn to warmer colors instantly.
• Use the “Color temperature” slider to adjust the warmness to less or more as per your need.

• If you want to automatically enable “Night Shift” mode, click the dropdown against “Schedule” and select “Sunset to sunrise” option. Mac will consider the sunset and sunrise timings based on your location settings. Alternatively, you can select “Custom” option and manually enter the from / to time for enabling / disabling Night Shift mode.  

Final Words

Automatic brightness adjustment, True Tone and Night Shift mode will all work well when you use Mac with lighter appearance. You may notice much difference with dark appearance mode. You can change the display to use light or dark mode under “Apple logo > System Settings… > Appearance” section. I would recommend using “Auto” mode for appearance and then enable all the above options.