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After installing Ubuntu 18.04 LTS a new Dell XPS 7590 laptop with OLED display, the brightness is stuck at the highest point (the Fn+F11 or F12 commands show that the brightness is being changed, but no brightness change occurs).

I have tried many suggestions from the web, but all failed; e.g., changing the acpi_backlight parameter values in /etc/default/grub, creating an xbacklightmon file, or installing brightness controller.

Is there any way that the brightness could be changed?

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  • Same on Mint 19.2 Cinnamon
    – Pablo
    Commented Oct 13, 2019 at 20:00
  • SAme on 19.10 in any prime-select mode
    – lrkwz
    Commented Nov 27, 2019 at 13:35

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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I recommend using the ICC Brightness tool, which worked well for my Dell 7590 with OLED screen. It requires compiling and installing a small utility, but it works well.

Full instructions can be found at https://github.com/udifuchs/icc-brightness but here is a summary.

$ sudo apt install git liblcms2-dev
$ mkdir ~/git
$ cd ~/git
$ git clone https://github.com/udifuchs/icc-brightness
$ cd icc-brightness
$ make
$ sudo make install

After a reboot your brightness keys should now work. Be careful not to use this in conjuction with the xrandr solutions as they don't play nicely together.

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    cheers !! This really did the trick... Just for the record, last command requires sudo
    – dgoosens
    Commented Jan 19, 2020 at 0:45
  • Yes, good point. I've updated my answer. Thank you @dgoosens.
    – David
    Commented Jan 20, 2020 at 14:36
  • great... now I just need to figure out how to setup dual screen (other screen is not 4K) as this does not seem to work very well with the Nvidia drivers (works, but ugly with Nouveau drivers)
    – dgoosens
    Commented Jan 22, 2020 at 10:55
  • It works for me on a Dell XPS 15 7590 w/ OLED screen, at least, to some extent. System keys don't work, but I can set the brightness on the command line. icc-brightness 82000 120000
    – Mario Olivio Flores
    Commented May 7, 2020 at 20:33
  • Hi @MarioOlivioFlores. It may work after a reboot, as there's an autostart element which does the hook-up to the keys. I have the same model laptop and it's working for me.
    – David
    Commented May 8, 2020 at 14:42
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Enter xrandr and check the output. In my case it was eDP-1. To test if it is the right one, enter xrandr --output eDP-1 --brightness 0.6 (intel driver). If yes, the brightness should have changed.

I found it at How to install Ubuntu on a Dell XPS 15 2019.

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  • Tried this, however, screen brightness did not change even after changing eDP-1 to XWAYLAND0 (my graphics card). Setting up the script seems to have worked, but the xrandr command doesn't.
    – emr12473
    Commented Oct 20, 2019 at 22:53
  • On my system the display wasn't eDP-1 but instead eDP-1-1 and so I used this command which both discovers the display and then changes the brightness : xrandr --output $(xrandr --listmonitors | awk '$1 == "0:" {print $4}') --brightness 0.6
    – gene_wood
    Commented Oct 25, 2019 at 15:33
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Followed this on a Dell XPS with Ubuntu 18. Apparently OLED displays are treated different. Command that worked for me was

sudo xrandr --output eDP-1-1 --brightness 0.7

https://www.dell.com/community/Linux-General/xps-15-9570-with-Ubuntu-18-04-02-LTS-problem-with-hotkeys-F11/td-p/7287583

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