Display Backlight - uneven lighting

I have turned off the option "Automatically adjust brightness as ambient light changes" but my screen is still getting slightly brighter and darker for short intervals.
Anyone else think this is an ominous sign?

Some people, myself included, have noted - despite all settings unchecked - the screen darkening on idle, then returning once you're not idle.
I'm not sure if this is your problem, but this is what a few of us have experienced.
Some have even reported it on powerbooks.
Here's what we do to help, but unfortunately, not solve:
1. Make sure all settings are unchecked, like you mention with your ambient light sensor - also the "dim display before sleep" too - on both power adapter and on battery
2. Lock those settings using the lock in the lower left corner
3. If that doesn't work, try unplugging power, and then replugging it in
4. If all else fails reset your PMU

Similar Messages

Why won't my display backlight come on?

I have a unibody MacBook Pro purchased in late 2009.
Sometimes when I wake up my laptop I can see that the display has come on but the backlight that makes the display bright is not on. On other words, the screen is completely dark, but under the right lighting I can see that the LCD itself is on (windows are up, the cursor is moving around the screen) but there is no light making it all bright (i.e., the display backlight is off). When I put it to sleep and wait for the indicator light to start pulsing and then wake it up again it will off then come on, but of course I shouldn't have to do that.
Perhaps related or unrelated is my keyboard backlight also doesn't work. I can turn the brightness up and down using the F5 and F6 keys and the indicator will come up on the screen showing the brightness going up and down, but the keys themselves are not lit at all.
Was there a recall sent out about this issue? I do have AppleCare.
Thanks.

I have the same thing, not only my current Retina MacBookPro (Mountain Lion) but on my previous 2008 MacBook black (Lion). I find it very odd that I'd have the exact same issue on two different computers; there must have been a setting on the old one that got migrated to the new one somehow?

Display's back lighting no longer works.

Have a MacBook air that is completely functional except for the fact that the display's back lighting is dead. Can see the desktop fine if you point a nice flashlight at the screen.
Is there a part I can order and replace to get a functional back light on my display again? Or am I stuck having to pay $700+ on an entire new display assembly? Perhaps just the LCD component of the assembly would be required or even better a simple back light panel/cable?

Not knowing which model MBA you have can mean the difference between an answer and none.
For the current models, it is probably more practical to replace the display panel as a whole than to disassemble it for just the backlighting components, if even doable. A replacement panel is around $500, from the likes of ifixit, plus the labor to install it for a current model MBA.
But if it is just a cable, as you speculate, only disassaembly is going to determine the feasability of a simpler repair.

My iPod touch isn't working correctly.it is displaying a white light and no matter what i try it isn't helping.tries holding the reset and power button together and tryed holding the power button in but it doesn't work. please can someone help?

my iPod touch isn't working correctly.it is displaying a white light and no matter what i try it isn't helping.tries holding the reset and power button together and tryed holding the power button in but it doesn't work. please can someone help?

Try the remaining items in the white-screen topic of.
iPod touch: Hardware troubleshooting
If not successful. let the battery fully drain and then charfe for an hour and try again.
Frequently a white scree nis due to a hardware problem.

Display, Backlight & OS issue

Hi all,
So, I opened my Macbook Pro 13" Late 2011 this morning to find the screen behaving strangely. There was a blue tint spreading from the left side, like ghosting, but more streaky.
Anyway, first thing I tried was to shut down the Mac and start from a fresh boot rather than from Sleep.
I power up and the screen doesn't even switch on. No flicker, no power. Also, strangely, the keyboard backlight doesn't work either.
PRAM reset and SMC reset both tried - both didn't change anything.
So, I plugged the Mac into an external display and that functions okay - albeit the O/S refuses to boot because of a permissions error that cannot be fixed using Disk Utility.
I'm in Single User mode copying my data manually to an external hdd ready to reinstall Mavericks.
My question, ultimately, is three-fold.
1. Are the LED display backlight and keyboard backlight linked in any way by hardware that could have failed?
2. Is this hardware part of the logic board or can it be replaced separately?
3. Would the issue with disk permissions be linked to the display problem and could a reinstall of Mac OS fix the display issue???
Any more info you need, i will be glad to provide. Bear in mind I do not have a functioning OS to give logs etc.
Thanks,
James

You should do what's easy for you. Amazon or service center.
A product is replaced withint the first 7 days of purchase if proved defected.
You have warranty, so you should probably go to Sony service center and see what they say. Most probably you won't need to contact Amazon. While the Amazon deal is good as well. Get the money back and buy the SW from Sony center.
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Won't boot - no display, solid white light. Fans spin up and gets loud.

Hi Everyone,
I have a Core Duo 20" that won't boot. The display won't light up, and the white light stays on the whole time. No chime. Fans start slow, but then gradually gets very loud after over the course of a few seconds.
I've began taking it apart. One suspect area is the DC/DC Inverter board. The POWER_GOOD line is only showing 0.16V. Most power supplies uses signaling between 3V and 5V so I'm suspecious of this 0.16V POWER_GOOD signal.
Can someone help chime in (no pun intended), or verify the POWER_GOOD signal voltage of an early 2006 iMac Core Duo (2105)?
THANK YOU!
Yue

By the way, I've done AppleOption+PR (from my LCII days!), and have removed the logic board battery, waited, reinserted and retired without success. Thanks!

PowerTOP: 2x Display backlight

Hi there,
On my Thinkpad X200T,PowerTOP shows me 2x power consumption for Display backlight.
See this screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/mP0H6hX.png
How should I interpret this?
Does my display use 4W in total or do I have indeed two different display backlights due to the tablet functionality of my thinkpad?
Or does PowerTOP interpret the display backlight twice because I have acpi_video0 and intel_backlight in /sys/class/backlight?
~ ls /sys/class/backlight
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2014-04-02 19:18:40.580222111 +0200 acpi_video0 -> ../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/backlight/acpi_video0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2014-04-02 19:41:48.878394230 +0200 intel_backlight -> ../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/drm/card0/card0-LVDS-1/intel_backlight
Is the double entry intended or should there be only one?
Thanks!
Last edited by orschiro (2014-04-02 18:18:37)

orschiro wrote:Furthermore, I think it only stores the current brightness level for restoring on boot, correct?
Yes thats what the man page says
# systemctl mask systemd-backlight@backlight:acpi_video0.service
will disable the service and result in a 100% backlight setting with no adjustment possible...
I think both are needed
EDIT: right I've just tried
# systemctl mask systemd-backlight@backlight:intel_backlight.service
and now my backlight setting is remembered and adjustable --- maybe this .service isn't needed. My powertop doesn't show actual wattage dissipation for some reason so maybe you could try this & report back on any changes in power consumption?
However, the systemctl man page does say to use the "mask" option "with care"...
Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2014-04-03 20:15:47)

HT4623 my new iphone(4S) background display color is light yellow instant of white.

my new iphone(4S) background display color is light yellow instant of white.

Today after more than 45 minutes, talking to Apple Web, they decide to send me a new iPhone 4s. Good luck to everyone.

Macbook Pro Uneven display backlight

Hi
I would like to know if uneven backlight on my macbook pro is covered by warranty
it was hard to get a good picture but,
http://the.cave.in.googlepages.com/uneven_backlight.jpg
sometimes its even worese
the display also flickers sometimes very lighyly (at 50hz etc.)
also
is there a good reason that while probing apples site
i could not find a single support e-mail address ?
cheers.
Brazy
.est

If the screen lighting is as bad as the photo seems to demonstrate, then yes, it's definitely a problem that would be covered by warranty. The screen should never actually flicker, though, since an LCD is refreshing pixel-by-pixel at 60hz, perhaps your brightness settings keep changing? If not, then it could even be the inverter (if you're using one of the CFL (pre-Santa Rosa) models). Either way, I'd try to get over to your nearest Apple Store when you can.

Uneven display backlight

Now that I finally got my display flicker fixed (for now) I am finally beginning to notice that the backlight isn't perfectly evenly uniformly lit like a CRT or even a desktop LCD which can have multiple light tubes. Looking at Tom's Hardware for the first time in a long time last night, I see that display uniformity is not one of the characteristics of even desktop LCDs.
On my MacBook, I can perceive that the right side is slightly dimmer, the bottom side is slightly dimmer, and a touch on the left.. center and top regions seem fine. It is subtle but it is there and a camera could probably see it better.
Par for the course with this screen?

Unfortunately, Apple geniuses have been told to say that unevenly illuminated displays are 'within specifications' no matter how bad they are. Of course, Apple would be swamped with returns and replacement requests if they actually admitted that it's not acceptable. You need to know what is normal or not before you go in and then stick to your guns and insist that they replace it.
a certain degree of uneven illumination probably is normal. I've never seen a macbook or macbook pro that has not had some degree of it. These bright displays tend to show it more than the older, but dimmer, Apple laptop displays.
Good luck!

Uneven backlighting and light leakage

OK, just booted up my new MBP and so far I'm pretty disappointed with the display. The backlighting is uneven and there is significant light leakage around the bezel. Furthermore, it doesn't seem to be even as bright as my 1GHz Ti book. I'm thinking that one of the lights in the MBP may be out.
Anybody else having similar issues? If most people have these great looking displays then I'm going to have to call Applecare and get it fixed.

Well, one thing is that it was pretty cold when it arrived. Having used it for a bit now, it looks better. Still not as awesome as I was expecting (the rest of the machine is absolutely great though). Unfortunately, I live no where near an Apple store, so I'm trying to decide if it is in fact flawed before I have to call Applecare and ship it back.
Thanks for the input.

Very uneven light display AFTER wake

hi, all of a sudden, the past 3 weeks or so all of a sudden after i wake the machine up from an extended sleep (a few hours, say overnight) the left side of the display si very noticibly darker. This is at full brightness. the right and centerisn parts are fine, after 10 secs ro so full brightness after warming up however, the left stays much darker. I thought i was crazy until i jsut brought up a reply here full screen, and you could notice that the elft was wayyyy darker then the right side idi say as if it were 50% roughly ONLY on the left side. After an hour or so it does away, mostly, however is now darker by what i woudl say 3 or 4 brightness bars on teh left. This is from hardboot, to afte rbeignon for hours.
Anyone ahve any ideas what could be causing this weird display issue - i had a perfect light screen for the past few moinths until all of a sudden, very bad after waking up for an hour or so on teh left then still darker.
ANyone know if apple was replacing displays due to noticable bad backlighting? I would like to try to get this resolved with apple and hopefully the display panel replaced... any ideas guys?

i've noticed something similar, only mine is in the middle that it is noticably darker and it goes away after a minute or so so i haven't worried about it too much.

IdeaCentre B520 display backlight issue

I have a Lenovo Ideacentre B520 All in one. It powers on alright. But the LCD backlight does not come on. I can see a faint picture on the screen if i use a flashlight. The unit's Backlight converter board i noticed the capacitor on it is damaged. I can order a new board and replace it (easy enough). I was wondering if this is a common thing on these all in one units? Another person told me it could be the mainboard of the unit. I'd rather spend about$50.00 than 189.00. Also when i hook the unit to HDMI out and use a external monitor i see the lenovo splash screen, but when i install a hard drive after the BIOS screen it locks up and i have to restart, but if i do not install a hard drive, then i can boot ubuntu or memetst (just for testing purposes). Any ideas?

Yes, at maximum brightness level the backlight bleeding is very visible but I use it at 5 or 6 level where it has excellent contrast ratio considering how crappy current notebook displays are in general. The uneven backlight is caused by fancy LED backlight which is still not able to deliver similar quality regarding uniformity as good old CCFL backlight (that's why professional LCD monitors still rely on W-CCFL backlight). But I agree that the top-left corner is way too much bad and might indicate that the panel is seated badly in the frame. On the other hand my old IPS panel in R51 also have backlight bleed at maximum brightness level.
Major problem is that Lenovo is still not able to fix the stupid bug with brightness level always set to max in BIOS screen that the backlight bleeding is very visible and irritating everytime you boot your machine.
IMHO, the X220 IPS panel is still much better than any ugly contrastless TN panel Lenovo puts into ThinkPads (except 15" FHD). I bet that you would hate the X220i TN panel more than this one
There are also two different revisions of the IPS panel, the second one fixes problems with image retention. As for comparison with Z60m, X220 display lid is much more fragile so the panel is not protected well against pressures and flexes. In any case panel flex should affect the backlight bleeding temporarily only. If it persists it is subject to repair (replace, reseat etc.).
Unfortunately I don't have any good low-light camera that takes useable pictures in dark environment so I can't post relevant images of the backlight bleeding.

X220 IPS display backlight issue (with photos)

Hello,
I've purchased the Lenovo X220 laptop with the Premium HD IPS display and I do have a problem with it (see below).
Laptop was purchased something like month ago and I've spotted this after I've started to work with it more heavily but after 14 days, so I was not able to return it to the seller (http://www.lenovoonline.cz).
When you put backlight to maximum you see that the display is not evenly lighted and forming bright spots on the bottom of it. It's most noticable on the black background.
I've sent notebook for repair (http://www.pcnet.cz) with this description (translated to english):
"With maximum brightness set and the black display/background (eg. BOOT screen) on the bottom edge of the display there are visible white spots/maps. Small but visible and not even with different sizes. It's most visible on black background and while limiting external light (darker room, working in the night). Spots highlights even more when you try to pull the display towards you into steeper angle."
The laptop has been in the repair for 2 weeks and the result was this description:
"This kind of display is very sensitive to any pressure, and it will result in the brightening the place. It is specific for this model line and it's not the reason to warranty repair. We recommend to lower the brightness level in the darker room. Check of the display frame has been done and no problem has been found."
Later they said they've replaced the panel too.
However the issue still persists (see attached photos).
Let me say few words about this:
display is showing the spots while in rest I'm not touching it, if it's sensitive for pressure than it is indicating that there's some pressure on it while mounted in the frame
I want to have backlight lighting the display evenly on the whole surface area, that's the correct function of a product anything else is NOT
if they claim this is how it should be and it's actually a "feature" of the PREMIUM display then if I had known I would choose regular TN display and even save some money, needless to say that in that case the word PREMIUM sounds like a bad joke
after lowering brightness level problem doesn't go away, still visible just gradually slightly less, depending on the brightness set
if you are working in the night without external light this is VERY irritating
So my question to you X220 community is, do you happen to have same issue?
as they say it's "normal" with X220
Thanks
EDIT1:
I've done a search now and it seems I'm not alone with this issue
PS:
I'm attaching two photos.
First is the X220 (booted into GNU/Linux with X running and mouse as reference).
Second is the very old Z60m (booted into Windows and running blank screensaver).
Compare for yourself which one you would prefer.
It was shooted in absolute dark (I'm used to work like that) with Canon EOS350D on tripod.
There are some slight artifacts which you normally not percieve but anyway I think it clearly shows my point.
X220
Link to image 1
Z60m
Link to image 2
Moderator note: images larger than 50k converted to links per forum rules: Lenovo Community Participation Rules

Yes, at maximum brightness level the backlight bleeding is very visible but I use it at 5 or 6 level where it has excellent contrast ratio considering how crappy current notebook displays are in general. The uneven backlight is caused by fancy LED backlight which is still not able to deliver similar quality regarding uniformity as good old CCFL backlight (that's why professional LCD monitors still rely on W-CCFL backlight). But I agree that the top-left corner is way too much bad and might indicate that the panel is seated badly in the frame. On the other hand my old IPS panel in R51 also have backlight bleed at maximum brightness level.
Major problem is that Lenovo is still not able to fix the stupid bug with brightness level always set to max in BIOS screen that the backlight bleeding is very visible and irritating everytime you boot your machine.
IMHO, the X220 IPS panel is still much better than any ugly contrastless TN panel Lenovo puts into ThinkPads (except 15" FHD). I bet that you would hate the X220i TN panel more than this one
There are also two different revisions of the IPS panel, the second one fixes problems with image retention. As for comparison with Z60m, X220 display lid is much more fragile so the panel is not protected well against pressures and flexes. In any case panel flex should affect the backlight bleeding temporarily only. If it persists it is subject to repair (replace, reseat etc.).
Unfortunately I don't have any good low-light camera that takes useable pictures in dark environment so I can't post relevant images of the backlight bleeding.

24" iMac Display Backlight Failure

This afternoon, an issue developed on my iMac 24" (Mid-2007) where the top half of my display seemed like it flickered and burned out. What it looks like currently is a very dramatic gradient from dark to light. I haven't found any support documents or discussions that address an issue like this.
I tried restarting my computer and to no avail, the problem persists. Also tried resetting the SMC and booting from the Install CD, and this did not fix the problem either. The basic Apple Hardware Test did not identify anything wrong (I did not do the extended test).
I am suspecting that the backlight in my display is failing. I wanted to see if anyone else encountered this issue and any thoughts about what could possibly be wrong. I am afraid that my iMac might be Genius Bar bound if no solution exists. I'm scared of what the repair costs might be...
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Maikeru-san

I experienced the same issue. When I don't use the iMac 27" and it automatically powers down I hear this ticking clock noise.
Troubleshooting Questions to Apple Support:
1) Is this automatic standby the same mode like manual standby mode?
2) it's not a display pitch sound but rather a HDD heads parking sound
3) Is this a hardware defect or a software issue?
My iMac is 48hours old and I bought it brand new directly from Apple.

Display Backlight - uneven lighting

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