You could be creeped out by Bing Chat on the go soon But, I do know the original backlit keyboards did use sensors behind the grills. I kind of shot myself in the foot by disabling the display auto adjust feature and thought there couldn't be any input from bezel sensor. The TouchBar's brightness is indeed controlled using that sensor. I must've had the flashlight up too far above the top cover, and light was leaking to the sensor up in the lid.

The ambient sensor for the display is the one near the camera at the top of the display.Įdit: Damn. *The reason that I suggest disabling the automatic control for the display is it will get rather bright in response to the flashlight being waved around and just confuse trying to see what the touchbar and keyboard are doing. Until I discovered this, I was a bit frustrated trying to control it via either the manual setting or whatever the system was trying to do when set to automatic control. If automatic keyboard brightness is enabled, you'll see the keyboard backlight get brighter (though with less delay).īottom line, at least as of the latest Mojave beta and the latest 2018 MBP (15'), there is no apparent way to control the touchbar brightness. There is a bit of a delay, but afterwards, you'll see the touchbar go to its full brightness. I believe, they've been located there as far back as there have been keyboard backlights on MacBooks.Īn easy way to check this out for yourself (and characterize the behavior of the touchbar brightness vs ambient light) is to first, turn off 'Automatically adjust brightness' option in the Display preference pane*, then, in a dimly lit room, shine a flashlight over either one or both of the speaker grills. There are two of them – one located behind each (left and right) speaker grill. The ambient light sensor for the keyboard and touchbar are located under the top cover. Here's what I've been able to determine about how the touchbar brightness controlled. So far, I agree the answer is 'you can't'.

Adjust brightness mac without keyboard