How to Disable Ubuntu Phone “auto dim” function?

Question

Is there a way to disable the auto dim function of the Ubuntu Phone (14.10 r22)? Even though I can disable the auto-brightness function and set the screen timeout to 10 minutes (or never) the screen of my phone is dimmed after a minute of inactivity - meaning NO TOUCH of the screen... This is annoying when watching youtube.

Answer 1

Preparation: If you haven't done so already, install the Terminal app.

In the Terminal write:

$ dconf write /com/ubuntu/touch/system/dim-timeout "@u 0"

The dim-timeout Key wants an unsigned int as a value. That's what the @u is for. The number stands for the seconds after the screen is dimmed (0 = infinite).

(Since the setting is stored for the local user (phablet), it's not nessecary to make the root file system writeable.)

(Tested on the Ubuntu tablet, with Ubuntu Touch 15.04.)

Answer 2

The auto dim is controlled by the donf key /com/ubuntu/touch/system/dim-timeout. You can set the timeout to 0 (= infinite) by executing this command in a terminal:

$ dconf write /com/ubuntu/touch/system/dim-timeout 0

The dconf database for the default user phablet is used for brightness control, not the root database, so do you should execute the command as phablet.

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The above should work, but I had to remount the root file system writable and play with the brightness in the system settings app until it worked, but I don't know why or what happened exactly. Remounting the root file system writable is done (as root).

# remount -o remount,rw /

You can lock it against writing again by rebooting. Try this anyway, to see if the fix stuck.