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⇱ New Linux Patches Allow Preserving Apple Mac Backlight Brightness Across Reboots - Phoronix


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New Linux Patches Allow Preserving Apple Mac Backlight Brightness Across Reboots

Written by Michael Larabel in Apple on 6 February 2026 at 08:23 AM EST. 8 Comments
A nice, overdue usability improvement is on the way for those using Apple Macs under Linux. Finally there will be the ability to preserve the same backlight brightness across reboots under Linux.

Currently when rebooting a Mac with adjustable display brightness under Linux, the brightness level is not saved and thus reboots and ends up being set to whatever was the last brightness value set by macOS. But two small patches to the Linux EFI code will allow saving the brightness on Macs under Linux.

👁 Apple MacBook


Atharva Tiwari posted the patches to write the brightness value to the EFI variable "backlight-level" for overcoming this behavior. Thus on boot the backlight-level is then properly restored to avoid any unexpected brightness changes to the display across reboots.

See this patch series for those interested in this EFI addition to avoid any jarring backlight changes across Mac reboots.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.