LG Ultrafine 5K on Mac mini M1 Keeps Dimming

[nothingtoseehere]

I have this brightness issue too. Mac mini M1 with LG Ultrafine 5K, macOS 12.1. Most times (but not every time!) when I wake from sleep, brightness is at maximum. Just pressing F1, then F2, on my old Apple Wired Keyboard, restores the brightness setting.
Strange quirk but not that disturbing that I so far invested the time and energy to call Apple. Maybe I should...

In fact, I called Apple about that pixel shifting issue mentioned in some other threads around here. That had been solved with some Big Sur update, and that had been embarrassing for me.

 

[farciar]

I had mac mini M1 connected to LG Ultrafine 5K v2 and never experienced these issues with brightness or pixel shifting (Monterey 12.0.1). Everything worked like a charm since the beginning.

I returned the M1 mini though, had some very strange cursor lag from time to time. Rare but super annoying. I was using an Apple trackpad, assume it was Bluetooth/Wifi. Awaiting the release of the new model with plexiglass.

 

[guymcc]

I'm having the same problem. 2 LG 5K monitors that have worked fine with previous hardware/OS but now reset almost every time the display sleeps. I cannot find anything meaningful on the Apple Support Forums.

 

[nicolasp]

Hey everyone! I've been running trough this issue lately. The only workaround I found so far every time it does that is:
1. Open your macbook if it's closed.
2. Unplug the LG display cable connected to your mac
3. Plug it again

After that, the display allows you to change the brightness back. Sadly this needs to be done manually every time and it's a bit frustrating :/

 

[newadventure]

All I have to do is use my keyboard to change the brightness by one level and it'll correct itself then

 

[Zensō]

Just checking to see if anyone has resolved this issue? I recently switched from an Intel MacBook Pro to a Mac Studio when I started having this issue with my 24” LG 4K Ultrafine.

 

[thefriendshipmachine]

I have a M1 studio mac mini and 3 ultrafine 5k displays.

Sometimes from sleep one of the displays will be dim, and I have to unplug ALL displays and plug them back in to fix it.

It's VERY annoying. If I go to settings to change the brightness for the dim display, it just changes the brightness for one of the other displays instead....

does anyone know a fix?

 

[saulinpa]

does anyone know a fix?

Right now Apple's fix is to throw out the LG Ultrafines and buy Apple displays.

 

[patchao2000]

I have this brightness issue too. Mac mini M1 with LG Ultrafine 5K, macOS 12.1. Most times (but not every time!) when I wake from sleep, brightness is at maximum. Just pressing F1, then F2, on my old Apple Wired Keyboard, restores the brightness setting.
Strange quirk but not that disturbing that I so far invested the time and energy to call Apple. Maybe I should...

In fact, I called Apple about that pixel shifting issue mentioned in some other threads around here. That had been solved with some Big Sur update, and that had been embarrassing for me.

same for me, Mac Studio Max + Ultrafine 5K old.

 

[Star72]

I have been having the M1 Max MacBook Pro + LG 5k dim on wake issue. I have had some success using Better Touch Tool - it has a trigger to run an action on ‘wake from sleep’ and I find that setting it to wait a few seconds ‘delay next action by x seconds’ after wake and then ’brightness down (external display)‘ followed by ‘brightness up (external display) gets it to the correct brightness again.

It is triggered by the MacBook waking from sleep - not necessarily the display. There may be a better way to do it in Better Touch Tool but this is at least a start.

 

[pcd213]

Just jumping in here with a "yeah, me too". I have two LG 24MD4KL-B monitors connected to a M1 Mac mini. I also saw this issue when I was using a M1 MacBook Air. I'm nearly positive this is an issue with the LG monitors. The LG screen monitor says that I'm running the latest firmware which tells me that LG hasn't cared enough to update their firmware's. EVERY SINGLE MORNING I need to go to control center and manually drag down and back up the brightness for each of the two monitors. It's a first world problem but incredibly annoying when you spend as much as you do for a setup. Tack on an issue where my Insta360 Link camera won't connect unless I manually remove it from the existing USB A port and connect it to the second USB A port, and you realize why doing these things every morning could drive a man mad...

 

[paradoxfranc]

Hi all! After some research, I was able to bypass this issue for the 27LG5KL & 27LG5KL-B by installing the LG screen manager from the apple App Store and updating the firmware for both monitors.

Why so hard LG? Why so hard...?

Link to Resource: https://www.lg.com/us/support/softw...US&category=CT10000030&subcategory=CT10000033

 

[njvm]

@paradoxfranc - not sure what you are referring to when you say 'why so hard LG'. I have the older 27MD5KA and it says in the manual to install LG Screen Manager to keep the monitor up to date.

I used to use this monitor with a 2018 Mac Mini but now I use it with M1 Max MBP - I have not had issues with screen brightness with either computer.

 

[pcd213]

Hi all! After some research, I was able to bypass this issue for the 27LG5KL & 27LG5KL-B by installing the LG screen manager from the apple App Store and updating the firmware for both monitors.

Why so hard LG? Why so hard...?

Link to Resource: https://www.lg.com/us/support/softw...US&category=CT10000030&subcategory=CT10000033

Happy that this has worked for you but I am running the latest firmware on both of my Ultrafine monitors and I still deal with this issue each and every time the Mac mini wakes up from sleep. It is one of the most irritating things I have ever experienced. Chinese water torture.

 

[pcd213]

I don't want to get too excited but I tried to shut off the automated night shift display feature and that seems to have fixed my issue. I'm going to keep seeing if the issue is consistently eliminated but at least this morning there was no dimming on my monitors!

 

[mouthster]

Add to me to this list, I'm using a M2 Mini Pro with a Studio Display as my main monitor and an LG 21" Ultrafine for my secondary. Firmware is up-to-date, and one of the first things I do on a new system is disable nightshift across all monitors. This is super annoying because when I wake my system up I have to click somewhere on the second monitor to toggle the brightness to get it to 100%.

EDIT: After some searching on Reddit it sounds like LG may have fixed this with the latest firmware for 5k monitors but 4k's are left in the dust.

 

[pcd213]

Add to me to this list, I'm using a M2 Mini Pro with a Studio Display as my main monitor and an LG 21" Ultrafine for my secondary. Firmware is up-to-date, and one of the first things I do on a new system is disable nightshift across all monitors. This is super annoying because when I wake my system up I have to click somewhere on the second monitor to toggle the brightness to get it to 100%.

EDIT: After some searching on Reddit it sounds like LG may have fixed this with the latest firmware for 5k monitors but 4k's are left in the dust.

Friendly note: the latest firmware did not do anything on my 4k displays. It may resolve the issue on the 5k model, though.

 

[WilliamG]

Hi all! After some research, I was able to bypass this issue for the 27LG5KL & 27LG5KL-B by installing the LG screen manager from the apple App Store and updating the firmware for both monitors.

Why so hard LG? Why so hard...?

Link to Resource: https://www.lg.com/us/support/softw...US&category=CT10000030&subcategory=CT10000033

Thanks for this link. I can confirm this issue is now fixed for me on my 27LG5KL-B after driving me mad for years. I was using a workaround with A Better Touch Tool before. If any people here are still having the issue, I recommend going that route. It basically automates adjusting the brightness so that you only see a brief microsecond of screen set too bright before it reverts to regular brightness.

In any case, on my 5K display, the latest firmware did fix it. I wonder when this came out..?

 

[pcd213]

I have been dealing with my second display flickering for a few weeks now. I just realized that when my Mac mini is placed on the desk but pushed behind the Ultrafine 4k display, the second display goes black. I recalled hearing about Ultrafine 5K issues like this but with when in proximity to wifi routers. Could it be that the 4k monitor also has this issue and also has interference with the Mac mini in addition to wifi routers?