Photo: Shahid Jamil (Shutterstock)
Most MacBooks have a backlit keyboard – the white light underneath that lets you see the keys when it’s dark. By default, the keyboard backlight turns on automatically when your MacBook detects poor lighting, and the brightness is adjusted automatically.
However, if you find that the brightness of your keyboard is too high or too low, you can adjust it or even turn off the keyboard backlight entirely if you want. Here are five ways to adjust the keyboard brightness on your MacBook.
Here’s how to prevent your MacBook from automatically changing the keyboard brightness
Deactivating the automatic adjustment of the keyboard brightness on the Mac. Screenshot: Pranay Parab
To adjust the brightness levels of the keyboard on your MacBook, you must first turn off the automatic adjustment of the keyboard brightness. You can press Option + F5 or Option + F6 on your keyboard for quick access to the keyboard settings page.
Alternatively, you can click on the Apple logo in the top left corner of your screen and go to System Preferences> Keyboard and choose the keyboard Tab.
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On this page, disable using the keyboard settings Adjust the keyboard brightness in low light.
How to adjust the keyboard brightness of your MacBook using your keyboard
The fastest way to adjust the keyboard brightness on your Mac is to use the function keys on the keyboard. When you press F5 (the little sunrise symbol) the keyboard brightness decreases and when you press F6 (the big sunrise symbol), it will increase. There is a helpful indicator on the display that shows you how bright the keyboard backlight is. If you press the F5 or F6 keys, you can use this display to measure the brightness levels.
Note that if you have changed the keyboard settings to use F1, F2, etc. as the default function keys,. can press fn + F5 to decrease the keyboard brightness, and fn + F6 to increase it.
How to adjust the keyboard brightness of your MacBook via the control center
Adjust the keyboard brightness via the menu bar on the Mac. Screenshot: Pranay Parab
If you’re using macOS Big Sur (version 11) or later, you can use Control Center to quickly adjust the keyboard brightness on your Mac. To check which version you are running, click the Apple logo in the upper left corner of the screen and select About this Mac. If it’s version 11 or higher, you’re ready.
Press the Control center iconnext to the clock in the upper right corner of the screen and select Keyboard brightness. You can click and drag the slider to the right to increase the keyboard brightness and to the left to decrease it.
You can quickly add the keyboard brightness button to the menu bar to save yourself a click. click on Apple logo again and select System Preferences> Dock & Menu Bar. Select in the left pane Keyboard brightness and select in the right pane Show in menu bar. The keyboard brightness icon (which looks like a sunrise) appears in the menu bar at the top.
How to turn off the backlight on the MacBook keyboard automatically
Deactivating the keyboard backlight on the Mac. Screenshot: Pranay Parab
You can also ask your MacBook to turn off the keyboard backlight when you are not using the keyboard by pressing to. walk System Preferences> Keyboard or press Option + F5 or Option + F6 on your keyboard.
On the keyboard settings page, enable that Turn on the keyboard backlight after. There’s a drop-down menu that defaults to five seconds, which means the keyboard backlight will turn off after five seconds of inactivity, but you can click the drop-down menu and choose a different interval.
How to turn off the keyboard backlight on your MacBook
The keyboard brightness is set to zero via the control center on the Mac. Screenshot: Pranay Parab
While most people don’t need to, some people use their MacBooks with external keyboards, and accidentally turning on the keyboard backlight can become a pain.
If you turned off the automatic adjustment of the keyboard brightness, just press the F5 on your keyboard until the keyboard backlight turns off. Alternatively, you can Control Center> Keyboard Brightness and move the slider all the way to the left. Once the keyboard backlight is turned off, it won’t turn back on unless you turn it back on manually.
