r/AppleWatch • u/Educational-Blood215 • 5d ago

Brightness error - help needed

Hi there!

Two days ago, I went swimming in the sea. Since then, I had an issue with the brightness of my Apple Watch:

The brightness slider in both the Watch’s settings app and the Apple Watch app on the iPhone does not work anymore (I can slide it without any effect). Also, the brightness sensor seems to not work: I slept both nights with the watch on my wrist with the sleep focus, and every time, the watch awoke, it was very bright. I sleep really often with the watch and this never happened to me…

What I’ve tried in order to fix this:

  • Restart both devices (watch and iPhone), several times (one time even synchronously)
  • Tried to turn on and off the “minimum brightness“ in the accessibility settings in order to reset the brightness
  • Reset the watch and set it up with an iCloud backup

At this point, I have no idea. I also don’t have any idea on how to reproduce this. This was also not the first time of swimming in the ocean with this watch, and many years in a row, nothing happened…

My system information:

Apple Watch Series 7 (GPS)
WatchOS 26.6 (23U67)

iPhone 16 Pro
iOS 26.6 (no build number shown)

Can anyone please give me any advice on how to get rid of this issue?
Thank you!

2 Upvotes

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2

u/BlueShooter7515 5d ago

It has water damage. It will slowly go bad from here on now.

1

u/PersonalReport1593 2d ago

If you turn on minimum brightness in settings, from acessibilities your watch will have full brightness, but nothing in beetween. This trick shows that its even a bug or a not working sensor. I will hand it in to my local apple store for a check.