iPhone 15 Pro screen brightness issue after iOS 26 update

So whoever mentioned to delete the widgets from the home lock screen, thank you. This eradicated the problem completely. I have not played with adding them back again to the lock screen because it was a pain fixing the issue. I’d rather forgo having them for now.

Can confirm, if you disable the widgets on the lockscreen the issue does not appear.

If you reenable them, the issue is there again!

Toggling off and on Auto Brightness (Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Auto-Brightness) has fixed this for me.

yes, as already written in the thread, the problem is the widgets, just remove them from the lock screen and it's solved

Try and force restart the iPhone to see if the issues persist

Press and quickly release the volume up button. Press and quickly release the volume down button. Press and hold the side button.When the Apple logo appears, release the side button.

Same same. iPhone 15 Pro. Updated to 26 last week. Ever since, roughly 1 in 4 times when I lift my phone to wake it, the screen is way too dim. I have auto brightness on. The only workaround is to hit the power button on the right of the phone to go into sleep mode, then press it again or lift the phone to wake it.

Absolutely astonishing that Apple didn't catch this during testing for iOS 26.

I've been testing the fix to remove all widgets from the Lock Screen, that seems to have fixed it. I think it happened to me once after I removed all widgets from my Lock Screen but it is waaaay better now.

I did also report this bug via the Apple feedback app last week, in my feedback it says "Recent Similar Reports: More than 10".

Same here on my 15Pro.. Actually opening a picture that has HDR in the Photos app also fixes the issue. No need to open instagram at all. This problem seems to be HDR-related.

To fix iOS 26 brightness issues, check and disable accessibility settings like "Reduce White Point" and "Auto-Brightness" in Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size. Also, turn off Adaptive Power in Settings > Battery and consider turning off True Tone under Settings > Display & Brightness.

i have tried this method, I think it’s works!

Thanks for the effort, but this really shouldn't be called a fix, but a temporary workaround. Its insane that apple has made us jump through these hoops to regain the most basic function of our phones.

You can actually just tap the home button once to trigger the brightness to return to normal (if you have siri enabled) as the animation seems to be HDR and triggers the screen mode to change or something like that.

Here’s what I did to temporarily fix the issue

Updated to iOS 26.1

Changed to a new wallpaper once

Went to Settings > General > Screen Capture > Choose SDR

After these steps, the problem seems to be resolved for now.

One and half month, and this major bug still in iOS 26.1 (23B85) on a iPhone 15 Pro Max. I do the suggested workaround of triggering Siri with the double click on the navigation bar that USUALLY works fine, because it may overload with the Siri not available bug. Apple entering the delivering half-baked software industry is a shameful milestone.

I have this EXACT same issue on the exact same phone as well. I’ve had it ever since I installed iOS 26 and both 26.0.1 and 26.1 have not fixed it. It’s a small issue so I’ve put up with it but I’m kinda hoping for a real fix soon. My main fixes right now are to either lock and unlock again or open a specific group chat because the background is an hdr image so it fixes the screen. I’ve already tried turning off the attention features thing and that didn’t seem to fix it, reduce white point and color filters are already off so it can’t be those, and I don’t feel this issue is bad enough to sacrifice widgets so I’m not turning those off.

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Found a temp solution for me. If the display is dim, one tapping the nav bar (bottom middle, similar to activating siri by double-tapping) brightens the screen to normal.

Hope this helps