2 Ways to Fix the Laptop Brightness Problem In Ubuntu

Two quick ways to fix the everlasting Laptop brightness problem in Ubuntu.

Ubuntu always had issues with Laptop brightness. The default hardware controllers never in Laptop keyboard worked most  of the time after a fresh install.

Follow below definite steps which worked till now for most of the Laptop based on feedback in this website at our old article.

Below method worked for below models (so far):

• ASUS G75-VW
• Dell Vostro 3000 Series
• Samsung RV411 Series

Fix Brightness Enabling Laptop Specific Drivers

• Open the file /etc/default/grub using gedit or any other text editor.
  Find below line.

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

• Change above line to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_backlight=vendor"

grub update for brightness control

This would ensure to load device specific drivers before default drivers in Linux.

• Save the file and close text editor.
• Open terminal and run below command.

update-grub

• Reboot.

After reboot, try adjusting brightness using Laptop dedicated control keys.

Fix Brightness Using a Software

If above method did not work, you can try below method using an app.

This app called ‘Brightness Controller‘ is capable to control display using a simple GUI. It supports multiple display as well.

The app is available in PPA. You can run below command to install it Ubuntu 16.10 Yakkety Yak, Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:apandada1/brightness-controller
sudo apt update
sudo apt install brightness-controller

For other download options you can refer this page.

After install you can find it under application menu or search it in Dash. Once opened you can see a bar which controls the display brightness which you can adjust as per your need.

Drop a comment if any of these methods worked for your laptop. Don’t forget to mention your Laptop model for benefit of others.