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How to Fix Screen Brightness Issue in Ubuntu Laptop

Last updated: April 1, 2015

screen brightness

Running Ubuntu on a laptop? You may found that Ubuntu doesn’t memorize your screen brightness level. Every time you reboot or wake the machine up from sleep, it resets the screen brightness to maximum level.

I’ve written how to save screen brightness level in Ubuntu, but it might not work for all video adapters.

Thanks to Norbert, he made a sysvinit-backlight script that automatically remembers your screen brightness level for all video adapters and loads the backlight levels on boot, reboot, or wake up from sleep.

To install the script:

Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run below commands one by one to get it from Norbert’s PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nrbrtx/sysvinit-backlight

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install sysvinit-backlight

If you don’t want to add PPA, you may grab the script directly from PPA packages page. So far, Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 12.04 are supported.

For more you may contact the the script author at launchpad.net.

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    9 responses to How to Fix Screen Brightness Issue in Ubuntu Laptop

    1. Alpino April 2, 2015 at 1:36 pm

      Hi Ji m!
      It seems to be the solution to main daily problems in Ubuntu. Every single time I had to lower the brightness manually. And it worked in both laptops; one with 14.04 and the other with 12.04, from where I am writing to you.
      Many thanks for all the necessary TIPS you collect for us!
      :-)
      From Connecticut.

    2. Xi April 20, 2015 at 7:37 am

      How to uninstall this completely including removal of PPA repos?
      Is manual removal of files/folders or change of codes needed?

      Please help with uninstallation and above queries.

      • Ji m April 20, 2015 at 2:50 pm

        To uninstall the package, use command:

        sudo apt-get remove sysvinit-backlight

        And to remove the PPA, use:

        sudo add-apt-repository -r ppa:nrbrtx/sysvinit-backlight

        After that, you may start Software Updater to refresh system package cache, or just run command:

        sudo apt-get update
        • Xi April 22, 2015 at 1:42 pm

          My friend installed this script with PPA in Ubuntu 14.10 64bit on but didn’t work. I think it only works on proprietary drivers.

          So, uninstalled using the above cmd.

          If Canonical fixes in Ubuntu 15.10 or fixes via update in 15.04, it’d be helpful rather than installing these unsuccessful workarounds.

        • Xi April 23, 2015 at 5:00 pm

          This script is not needed with Ubuntu 15.04. My friend’s issue is resolved in the latest version. Just we need to fix the function keys as usual and even after reboot, the system remembers the brightness value by default.

    3. NorbertX April 28, 2015 at 6:38 pm

      I’m author of the sysvinit-backlight package.
      After some testing I can say that Ubuntu 14.10 is not supported by script, because of bad sysvinit scripts support.
      Please upgrade 14.10 to 15.10 – it uses systemd, which has special service.
      So my script is compatible with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and 14.04 LTS.
      For details see bug at https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1270579 .
      Current version support hybrid graphics and saves and restores keyboard backlight too.
      Thank you NoobsLab!

    4. goonerDroid May 12, 2016 at 4:50 pm

      Issue is still reproducible in Ubuntu V16.04 with x64 architecture