Tips & more

MacBook Pro 2021: how to turn off keyboard backlight automatically

You don’t have to manually adjust keyboard brightness on your 2021 MacBook Pro. The backlight can automatically turn off when you don’t use the keyboard for 5 seconds.

In older MacBook Pro models, it was easy to adjust the keyboard brightness. The controls were included in the Touch Bar.

In the MacBook Pros released in 2021, the Touch Bar is gone. Where are the keyboard brightness settings and how to access them?

Ask yourself a question: why do you need to adjust or reduce the keyboard backlight brightness? 

In my case, the only situation in which the keyboard brightness suddenly becomes important is when I want to watch a movie, and the highlighted keys are too distracting.

Did you know there is a setting that lets you turn off the keyboard backlight automatically after 5 seconds of inactivity?

5 seconds is the usual delay time to hide the video controls in video streaming services or movie player apps.

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How to turn off keyboard backlight automatically on MacBook Pro 2021

1. Click on the slider icon on the right side of the menu bar. You will open the Control Center widget.

MacBook Pro 2021 how to adjust keyboard brightness

2. Click on the Keyboard Brightness panel.

Adjust keyboard brightness MacBook Pro 2021

3. Here, you can adjust the keyboard backlight brightness manually, but we want to enable automatic setting. To do this, click on the Keyboard Preferences link.

MacBook Pro 2021 turn off keyboard backlight how to

4. Find the check box saying “Turn keyboard backlight off after […] of inactivity.” From a drop down menu, you can select values between 5 seconds and 5 minutes. 

MacBook Pro 2021 turn off keyboard backlight inactivity

Done! No more irritating keyboard backlight drawing your attention every time you start watching a TV series on Netflix.

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