Display brightness is one of the main power eating culprits in laptops. As a result, many modern operating systems including Ubuntu are optimized to automatically adjust the brightness so as to maximize laptop’s battery life.
If you run Ubuntu on a laptop you might have noticed that Ubuntu dims the display when the system is idle and is not connected to the AC power. This feature is definitely helpful for increasing battery life but can be extremely annoying if you are reading a long web page or article. Now if you are tormented by this feature you can either disable it or extend the time that screen goes dim.
Disabling ‘Dim Display When Idle” feature
- Go to System > Preferences > Power Management.
- In the Power Management Preferences window, click on the On Battery Power tab.
- Remove the check of both “Reduce backlight brightness” and “Dim display when idle” options.
Increasing the Amount of Time to Dim the Screen
If you are interested to change the amount of screen dim time or the brightness amount, you’ll need to use Configuration Editor:
- Press ALT + F2 and in the Run Application window, type gconf-editor.
- Go to apps > gnome-power-managment > backlight.
- Now change the value of idle_dim_time. You may also want to change other settings such as the value of idle_brightness.
Tags: Quick Tip
