Cannot change Screen Brightness Lock

[humbertobarbosa]

Hello there somehow with a key stroke combination my 2 yo daughter managed to lock the ability of changing brightness on my 2021 MBP M1 Pro. When I press the F1 or F2 keys it shows the standard brightness changing overlay, but showing a padlock and thus not changing.



You can see in the screenshot what I'm referring, tried already SMC reset and NVRAM reset also. Still the same.



Can anyone help?

 

[omnimax]

First thing I would check if the display preset mode was changed to a preset OTHER THAN the 1600 nit preset in display prefs. Those other preset modes lock the brightness because they're reference modes.

 

[humbertobarbosa]

First thing I would check if the display preset mode was changed to a preset OTHER THAN the 1600 nit preset in display prefs. Those other preset modes lock the brightness because they're reference modes.

It was and still is set to the photography profile. Before I could change

 

[omnimax]

I just changed mine to the photography preset and my brightness is locked as well. All the other preset modes beside the XDR and Apple Displays presets have their brightness settings locked. My understanding was that this is intentional as these are reference modes.

 

[humbertobarbosa]

@omnimax ok I’ll take that for now. Coincidentally just noticed after 2 months today , when my little one touched a bunch of keys and then I tried to change brightness and couldn’t.
I’ll take your word
TY

 

[Krevnik]

I just changed mine to the photography preset and my brightness is locked as well. All the other preset modes beside the XDR and Apple Displays presets have their brightness settings locked. My understanding was that this is intentional as these are reference modes.

This is correct. These presets have a fixed nit level defined in them. Saves someone from having to guess what brightness level corresponds to the right nit level for the work they will be doing. Quite handy, actually.

You can change the preset back to the top preset (“XDR”) which will unlock the brightness controls.