Ambient Sensor Control

Is it possible to disable or control the ambient light sensor?

the vivoactive wakes on gesture to a dimly lit screen. Its not bright enough and makes the watch too hard to use when you have less than perfect vision.

I've looked and searched and i cant find any way to control it.

I imagine its simple to add a button to disable this?

  • What you are describing sounds more like the watch is in "Sleep Mode"

    Try reviewing this article for ways of Customizing the Sleep Focus Mode

  • Thank you. Definitely this is the watch in AOD mode, then gesture or tap to wake. Once awake, there is two modes. Bright and not as bright. It only uses the bright mode when in a bright environment. eg if i face my watch toward a bright light source, it instantly goes to a higher brightness. Its really terrible, the watch in this dim mode is very difficult to see.

  • I have the same problem. Apparently this is a known problem with newer versions of all of their watches. They need to add an option to disable the autobrightness. I will return my watch because of this

  • I agree, i will be returning it too. it basically doesnt work indoors, its unusable in low light.

    It would be very simple to give us a button to disable this, but until they do its just too dim for me.

  • and 

    1) using the article Display and Brightness Settings - what settings do you have for the brightness?

    2) May I reach out to each of you directly and request some follow up info?

    3) Would you be willing to take a video or pictures that show what you are describing? 

    When I use my vivoactive 6 in  low light situations I don't have the difficulty you are encountering. It would help to get a good understanding of your experience

  • 1. Regardless which combination of settings in Display and Brightness the same issue occurs. eg with AOD=on. The watch will go from the standby mode to display mode, but indoors, it goes to 75% brightness (or similar). If i tilt my watch to the bright computer screen, the watch will go up to normal/max brightness. It does this with AOD on or off.

    2, yes sure, anything to get this fixed. its one issue with this watch, everything else is great, but this is super annoying.

    3. sure i will do this, tell me where to share it.

    I have 9.17 update installed.

  • I've already made a ticket with Garmin Support and after sending them a video they replied that everything is working as it should be. In other words, you have to use their brightness setting and can't adjust it. Welcome to 2025 Smiley. Some problem with the Fenix 8, it's on the forums here too. @Garmin, let me know when you add an option to disable autobrightness, maybe i'll come back. But for now, we are going to return this watch.

  • Darn I should have researched this some more.  Nobody mentioned this in any of the youtube reviews.  I just got a new watch yesterday and found it was super hard to read last night while watching TV in the dark.  I guess there is nothing to be done about this except return it?  It seems like such a simple change to add I can't believe Garmin would let all these potential sales go rather than add such a simple feature.

  • I’ve returned it too. It’s strange because I used the Venu 3 which has the same brightness and there 0,0 problems.  The screen from my VA6 was just very dim. And they don’t respond here, so I guess it won’t be fixed soon..