How to enable or disable the adaptive brightness feature in Windows 10

Adaptive Brightness is a very useful feature of Windows 10. When enabled, it adapts the screen brightness taking into consideration the environment's lighting intensity. If your device has an ambient light sensor, it will be utilized by the operating system to change the level of the display brightness. If it's bright in the room where your PC is, the display brightness will be adjusted automatically. Let's see how to enable or disable this feature.

Out of the box, this feature was disabled on my device. There are several ways to enable it, let's review some of them.

Table of contents.

1. Enable adaptive brightness in Settings
2. Enable adaptive brightness in Power Options

Enable adaptive brightness in Settings

There is a special option available in the Settings app to enable adaptive brightness in Windows 10. Use it as follows.

1. Open Settings.
2. Go to System -> Display.
3. On the right, find the option Change brightness automatically when lighting changes.
4. Turn on the option.

This will enable the adaptive brightness feature in Windows 10 instantly.

To disable adaptive brightness, just switch off the option "Change brightness automatically when lighting changes" and you are done.

Enable adaptive brightness in Power Options

The same can be done using the good old Power Options applet. To access it, do the following.

1. Press Win + R shortcut keys together on the keyboard to open the Run dialog.
2. Type the following in the Run box:

   powercfg.cpl

   Hit the Enter key.

3. This will lead you to the Power Option section of the classic Control Panel.
   
   There, click the link "Change plan settings".
4. The following window will be opened:Click "Change advanced settings for this plan" at the bottom.
5. The following dialog window will appear on the screen:There, go to Display -> Enable adaptive brightness.

   Enable it on battery and when plugged in.

You can use the same options to disable adaptive brightness, both when on battery and when plugged in.

As you can see, Windows 10's Settings app does not offer you an option to disable or enable adaptive brightness separately for the battery and plugged in mode. This option remains in the classic Control Panel. So,

• If you need to enable adaptive brightness only when on battery or when plugged in, refer to the classic Power Options applet.
• In other cases, you can use the Settings app.

That's it.

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