Question Elderly relative keeps dimming the screen!

[AlanGalaxy]

Hi, I'm at my wits end. I have an elderly relative who has a Motorola e20. The problem is she keeps accidentally dimming the screen to minimum and is unable to rectify it. Every time she does it I have to travel half an hour there to put it right.

Is there any way of preventing the settings being accidentally tampered with?

 

[notforhire]

Hi, I'm at my wits end. I have an elderly relative who has a Motorola e20. The problem is she keeps accidentally dimming the screen to minimum and is unable to rectify it. Every time she does it I have to travel half an hour there to put it right.

Is there any way of preventing the settings being accidentally tampered with?

I have an 89 year old aunt, 4 hours away, using my old S22U. She's constantly playing with the Ring app and cameras. I have no solution for you. At least, in my aunt's case, I can walk her through settings and put things back the way they were.

 

[methodman89]

Do they know what they are doing to cause the screen to dim?
Can you write on a note card how to increase the brightness?
Maybe get them another device, such as a fliphone to call when the dimness occurs, and relieve the stress of not having a comm device?
I went down a similar path with my mom, I think.
You may just need to get creative. Good luck

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Is the screen dimming so much that nothing can be seen at all? The native brightness slider should not be able to get that low, so if it is dimming to nothing, that would suggest some 3rd party screen dimmer app is installed.

 

[AlanGalaxy]

Hi folks, so far we still haven't found a solution to this, the person involved is slightly vision impaired so the minimum brightness level renders the screen black to her. We still haven't worked out what she does and she can't tell us, 'it just happens' she says!

It would be great if there was some kind of 3rd party app which just locks the brightness so it is unable to be changed, even if the manual slider is used but so far we have drawn a complete blank. Even the standard automation tools don't have provision for this.

If only there were a way for the minimum brightness level could be adjusted so she can still use the device even if she inadvertently hits the manual slider.

 

[B. Diddy]

Is she comfortable with voice commands? She could use Google Assistant and say "Hey Google, set brightness to 100%." Of course, the phone would have to be set up to recognize her voice, or you'd have to teach her how to manually bring up Google Assistant (like by long-pressing the Power button).

 

[Mooncatt]

Is auto brightness turned on? I wonder if it's dimming itself down to match regular ambient brightness, which is too dim for her. I would double check that function is turned off. Just be aware some phones can have that and other brightness options available as a toggle in the pull down notification bar, so also double check those are removed.