The Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro features backlit keys that make it a lot easier to type in the dark. The Magic Keyboard brightness can be changed manually or automatically, based on the ambient lighting conditions. But sometimes you want to watch a movie in the dark, or perhaps read a long article or a book without the keyboard backlighting interfering. To help with that, our tutorial will teach you how to adjust the Magic Keyboard brightness to your liking.
The backlit keys on the Magic Keyboard are precisely the right brightness most of the time, but Apple, unfortunately, hasn’t included the option to shut off the backlight completely.
And because the Magic Keyboard doesn’t have a row of function keys above the number row with system-wide controls such as the volume or backlighting brightness, like on MacBooks, you must dig into the Settings app to manually adjust key brightness using a software slider.
Unfortunately, you cannot adjust the brightness of the keys on your Magic Keyboard via Siri, nor can you do that through the Control Center, which would have saved us from having to go deep into Settings every time we want to control the brightness of the keys on the Magic Keyboard.
Tutorial: How to automatically turn off MacBook backlit keyboard when inactive
Follow along as we show you how to adjust the Magic Keyboard brightness to your liking, especially for those times when you’re feeling like watching a video with the lights out.
How to adjust Magic Keyboard brightness
To manually change the brightness of the keys on your Magic Keyboard, do this:
- Open Settings on your iPad.
- Choose General from the list.
- Select Keyboard.
- Choose Hardware Keyboard.
- Now drag the Keyboard Brightness slider to the right to increase the keyboard backlit brightness or to the left to make the backlit keys dimmer.
The Hardware Keyboard section only appears if you have a physical keyboard connected to your iPad. Otherwise, iPadOS automatically hides this section to avoid confusing users.
The 11-inch Magic Keyboard is available from Apple in exchange for $299. The 12.9-inch version is $349. The Magic Keyboard is compatible with the 2018 and newer iPad Pro models.
To see all the iPad keyboards from Apple, visit apple.com/ipad-keyboards.