Apple launched the brand new, completely overhauled 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with a Liquid Retina XDR display not too long ago. And the company’s Pro Display XDR has been around for quite some time. But for owners of the hardware, there may be some issues with the screen brightness that Apple is now addressing.
As noted by 9to5Mac, Apple has officially published a dedicated support document that covers what customers should do if they experience an issue with screen brightness. This covers both the brand new MacBook Pro models equipped with the Liquid Retina XDR screen, and the Pro Display XDR.
According to the document, the brightness on these displays may be limited. The support document says there may be two different warning icons that pop up either in the menu bar or Display menu in Control Center. In that case, the company says your display is either in low power mode or “using limited brightness.”
The published support document says that this can happen for a couple of different reasons. First, if the ambient temperature in the room is particularly high and the customer has been “playing very bright content for an extended period of time.”
If that is the case, Apple offers up some solutions to try:
- On MacBook Pro with Liquid Retina XDR display, quit any apps that could be consuming significant system resources.
- Use the Apple XDR Display or Pro Display XDR reference mode unless your current workflow requires a specific reference mode.
- Lower the ambient temperature of the room.
- Close or hide any windows with HDR content.
- Choose Apple menu  > Sleep to put your Mac to sleep. Let your display cool down for 5-10 minutes, then press any key on the keyboard to wake your Mac.
The company adds at the end of the document that if the problem persists, and the temperature in the room is less than 77 degrees, the customer should contact Apple directly.
Both these display types offer up a lot of peak brightness. They offer up support for up to 1600 nits of peak brightness, and can go to 1000 nits of sustained, full-screen brightness.
No word on how widespread (or not) this particular issue is. The Pro Display XDR has been around for a couple of years now, but the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with Liquid Retina XDR displays only launched near the end of last year.
If you’ve run into this issue, let us know if any of Apple’s solutions actually fix the problem.