Is there anyway to change my laptop's lcd brightness? I have a Toshiba Satellite A105-S4114, and when using OSX my battery dies quickly because of the brightness being all the way up. Is there any way to lower the brightness?

*bump*

Check your laptop manual. You probably have to press some key combo to change brightness.

Fn+F6 or Fn+F7..... That's how I change my brightness. But in OS X that does nothing... Any other suggestions? Has anyone else gotten screen brightness in OS X?

May be different for yours, but on mine Fn and the down arrow decreases brightness, Fn and the up arrow to increases it.

~mac.nub

i was lucky i can still press fn+Up arrow ect and it all still works

Just an idea but maybe set the brightness to the desired amount in Windows or some OS that works with that and then boot back into OS X.

gmodfan,

Stop tricking people into getting you a free iPhone with that Click here link in your sig.

Still nothing.... do i need a special kext file or something?

No, has always worked out of the box for me.

Can't think of anything else to suggest

~mac.nub

I've the same issue.
Sony Vaio Vgn-n21s with GMA 950.
I can manage brightness in another OS but Mac ignores the hardware value and set brightness to the top. Someone does know how to adjust it?

Anyone have any info?

Maybe theres something in System Preferences under Displays that lets you do something

Nope, there is no brightness option? Any more ideas?

Same for me on my Samsung r55 Aura Clayton. No Options for changing brithness in OSX. But during booting when the white screen with apple logo appears i can change brithness.

What's your OSX Version?

I have OS X 10.4.10. I also have Vista, and in Vista I needed to install a program from Toshiba to change my brightness. Besides OS X and Vista, I have Ubuntu installed, and in Ubuntu my brightness is also changable. Has anyone been able to change the brightness on a laptop in OS X?

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/31515

The software is called Shades, i use it too on my Acer laptop with OS X Im amazed that nobody else heard about this program..
It's a very handy program to change brightness settings...

Hopefully i helped you!

Cheers,
Nitra

But shades won't help you to save your power. It adds just a dark overlay to your screen...

Exactly. I downloaded shades, and it's a nice program, but will it save battery life, which is my main concern?

Yeah logically it will save battery life

Sorry to say black... But Shades does not help battery life. It uses a black overlay but the lcd brightness is always set to the top. This is the reason for having 1000 threads about lcd brightness not working.

The real problem is gma950. This driver is build for mac-mini, and mac-mini has not a laptop lcd....!
The AppleFrameBuffer seems to override the brightness value every sync.

We need a patch to gma950 and I actually am not able to write it.

There are only 1000 threads, because this problem has not been fixed... ='(

EDIT: Didn't MacBooks have the GMA 950?

up until two days ago, yes

If the MacBooks had the GMA 950, why is there no way to change the LCD brightness?

It's NOT because of the GMA945 chipset, actually. It's because the driver only supports one profile of LCD panels. This could be changed by editing the AppleBacklight plist, but what's in there is unintelligable - so hacking it would be "fun". And don't bump topics waiting for other peoples help, keep hacking and adding things you find out yourself. What I just told you took 40 seconds to find out.

Hmmm.... let's see what makes this Backlight plist tick

Do the following:-
- Open the system preferences
- Select Display
- Click on the colors tab
- Select Adobe RGB profile

If it is still too bright, then select your monitor's profile and calibrate it.

That will make the screen darker, but will it help save my laptop's battery life? And I want to be able to change the brightness.

It won't make a huge difference, but it will help. I made a dark color profile for my laptop LCD and it adds about 1/2 hour-45min to my battery life. I hope someone will start working on a better solution to this.

Hi,

I might have found a solution without any use of third-party software :
(well it works on Toshiba L40 with mobo Intel 82945GM, Graphic GMA950, Koolkal 10.4.10 update on Jas 10.4.8)

Here is what I did :

- Check and install the last bios update from the Toshiba website (for my laptop = Bios 2.20)
(the update needs Windows or a Floppy disk , who uses this crappy stuff nowadays ?)
- Reboot and press F2 on "Toshiba" boot screen (enter the BIOS)
- Decrease (Fn + F6) or increase (Fn + F7) the brightness of the LCD panel
- Save and exit the BIOS and boot on the hard drive.

The grey apple boots with a lower brightness but the login screen might put it back to the higher level:
It seems that this is caused by AppleIntelIntegratedfFramebuffer.kext
I have replaced mine by the 1.4.18.6 version from 10.4.3
Do the usual chown, chmod, remove kextcache repairpermissions and reboot

Et voilà !!!

This trick is not wonderful, as you still need to reboot in the Bios everytime you want to change the LCD brightness, but at least it will save your battery life (about 75% more time with the lower brightness level !!!).

hi f1orent
interesting solution!
where did you find the 1.4.18.6 AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext ?
I checked the 1.4.3 update (both combo and normal) on the apple website, but the file is not in there....
thanks in advance

Hi Niko,

I think I found it on a previous 10.4.3 Install DVD. I can't remember exactly which because I keep a separate copy of every 10.4.x extensions, in a folder of my harddrive, for easier testing purpose.

You will find a copy of the kext here : http://rapidshare.com/files/82669658/AIIFBk.zip.html
Let me know if it works for you too.

Btw, I recently discovered that there is no need to enter the bios. The LCD brightness can be adjusted while the Toshiba Logo is still on screen. It does not let much time to adjust the brightness, but it is still faster than enter/exit the bios.

it work fine , I can now have a low brightness on osx , I only tried with my tiger partition yet I don't know if it work with leo .

I only set my brightness on windows and it work now the brigtbess doesn't increase during boot
I have a vaio sz ultra portable so i will now be able to use osx when i travel

it s great thanck you very much for that , I was looking for it for a long long time

but i thing I m not alone so it would be nice to share it in a new post

It works fine too with leopard 10.5.0
I have test once and my battery life time is now near 4 hours (it is about 5 hours using xp)
thank you again for this kext

Hi MacVaio

I am glad it works for you too on both Tiger and Leo

Regarding a new post for that, I think that looking for "LCD brightness" will drive anyone to the current thread, so it is pretty easy for anybody to find it.

However, if you want to share it with other in a separate thread, feel free to do so.

f1orent, thank you so much, I can now adjust the brightness in 10.5.1 on my T60 and it even works while running OSX. That is very cool!! Thanks again!

f1orent,
you are a genius! thanks for finding this solution... I had basically given up on osx on my nc2400 due to poor battery life but I now have full control of the screen brightness in leopard and have far better batery life (still not great but then it isn't great in windows OR linux!)

Thanks again!!!

f1orent i replaced the kext with the one you provied, and now it wont seem to boot, it begins to boot up, and it stops booting. i now im stuckon the grey apple boot screen, and can move around the cursor.. im on leopard btw. how do i fix this?

got a core duo lappy sony vaio with intel intergrated

nm fixed it by doing the ./9a581PostPatch.sh again.

Hullo, I need the file, can you please upload it to somewhere else? (Like here?) I cannot download from that site for whatever reason.

Thanks!

Or is there any other program/workaround that enables me to control the backlight? No "shaders", "gamma adjusts" please.

here i;ve attached the file. haven't used it myself though, will try soon.

Hmm, on my Toshiba M115, I can't change the brightness in BIOS or at the Toshiba boot screen. In 10.5.2, the 1.4.18.6 AIIFB only made my keyboard/trackpad not work, so I'm back at 1.4.20.28.

According to Toshiba, I have the latest BIOS (v1.50, 3/15/07).

Anything that darkens the screen will save battery life. in effect, if the full screen is darkened then the lcd backlight dims and uses less power.

"Only CRT displays use more energy to display brighter things. For everything else, it is completely false that a black display uses less energy than a white page. The backlight on an LCD is on for the entire LCD regardless of what is being shown. The black pixels are only black because the LCD blocks out light. Same with projectors, etc."

i've also had this problem as i do have the same laptop as fierce...

has anyone else found a more practical solution to this problem?

my thinkpad r61e ON 10.5.2 canot change THE lcd Brightness ,it's too light.

**BuMP**
The Idea Train Has RUn DrY!

any upadate？？？？、

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=101966

any upadate？？？？、