I have Infinix Air Pro+ and I use it for my work. I can say it is a good laptop coding mainly because it has 2.5k OLED 16:10 screen. But I found a problem with its screen color. When the screen brightness is below about 50% and the screen turned off (to save power, not necessarily going system sleep/suspend) and turns back on, the color looks washed out.

First time I noticed this issue is because I was using a pitch black wallpaper image (so I can flex my OLED display). After my screen turns back on, my wallpaper’s black color becomes grainy, washed out, as its doesn’t have pitch black color anymore. Then I noticed, the color will be fixed after I crank the brightness to above 50%. Turning the brightness down again after this still gives me correct black level.

So, I was wondering if I create a script that will turn the brightness to above 50% and restore it to where it was every time my screen is waking up from a sleep. With a help from Google and ChatGPT, I create these scripts as a workaround for this annoying issue.

Windows

Before continuing, I’m sorry I can’t give any screenshot for this Windows section because I already switched to Linux, but I hope I can write it clearly.

Get screen wake up event

I need to listen to an event that tells me “Hey, the screen is turning on”. Fortunately, Windows has Event Viewer that I can use for this. I found that an event from Kernel-Power with event ID 507 is the correct event that means the screen in turned back on.

Script

Next thing to do is create the script to control screen brightness. After trial and error, I found NirCmd can help me to change my screen brightness. Then I create this Powershell script.

# Infinix Air Pro Plus suffers from washed out colors 
# after the display goes off and back on if the brightness is below 50%. 
# This script will increase the brightness to 60% when initial brightness 
# is below 50% else it will increase 10% from current brightness and turn 
# back to initial brightness value.

# Path to NirCmd executable
$nircmd = "C:\nircmd-x64\nircmd.exe"

# Function to temporarily adjust brightness
function Adjust-Brightness {
    param (
        [int]$InitialBrightness,
        [int]$TargetBrightness
    )

    # Set brightness to target
    & $nircmd "setbrightness" $TargetBrightness
    Start-Sleep -Seconds 2

    # Restore to initial brightness
    & $nircmd "setbrightness" $InitialBrightness
}

# Dummy current brightness (replace this with actual detection logic if available)
$currentBrightness = (Get-CimInstance -Namespace root/WMI -ClassName WmiMonitorBrightness).CurrentBrightness

if ($currentBrightness -lt 50) {
    # If brightness is below 50%, temporarily set to 60
    Adjust-Brightness -InitialBrightness $currentBrightness -TargetBrightness 60
} else {
    # Otherwise, increase brightness by 10%
    $newBrightness = [Math]::Min($currentBrightness + 10, 100)
    Adjust-Brightness -InitialBrightness $currentBrightness -TargetBrightness $newBrightness
}

Make a schedule

I use Windows’ Task Scheduler to run the script each time Kernel-Power with event ID 507 occurs. I can’t show the step-by-step guide because I’m on Linux now, but I have a backup file for this task. All you need is just to import this task in Task Scheduler.

Note: You have to change the command it executes to where you save the Powershell script. Also change the author into YOUR_PC_NAME\YOUR_USERNAME.

Linux

I’m using EndeavourOS which use systemd. So this guide is applicable to systemd init system only. If your linux use something else, you need to adjust it with your init system.

Get screen wake up event

I already tried several ways to listen the screen wake up events. But I can’t find any using acpi and udev. So I tried different approach. I check dpms property from screen device in /sys/class/drm/card1-eDP-1/dpms. It has On and Off value that I can use for triggering a script to fix the color.

Script

I have 2 scripts for this approach. One for checking /sys/class/drm/card1-eDP-1/dpms value and another one for fixing the color.

#!/bin/bash
# monitor /sys/class/drm/card1-eDP-1/dpms value
# place it to /usr/local/bin/monitor_screen_power.sh

prev_state=""

while true; do
    state=$(cat /sys/class/drm/card1-eDP-1/dpms)
    
    if [[ "$state" != "$prev_state" && "$state" == "On" ]]; then
        echo "Screen turned on! Running script..."
        /usr/local/bin/brightness_fix.sh
    fi

    prev_state=$state
    sleep 1  # Adjust polling interval as needed
done

#!/bin/bash
# adjust the brightness
# place it to /usr/local/bin/brightness_fix.sh

# Path to brightness control (may vary based on hardware, check /sys/class/backlight/)
BRIGHTNESS_PATH="/sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness"
MAX_BRIGHTNESS_PATH="/sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/max_brightness"

# Read current brightness
CURRENT_BRIGHTNESS=$(cat "$BRIGHTNESS_PATH")
MAX_BRIGHTNESS=$(cat "$MAX_BRIGHTNESS_PATH")

# Convert brightness levels to percentage
CURRENT_PERCENT=$(( CURRENT_BRIGHTNESS * 100 / MAX_BRIGHTNESS ))

# Function to set brightness based on percentage
set_brightness() {
    local TARGET_PERCENT=$1
    local TARGET_BRIGHTNESS=$(( TARGET_PERCENT * MAX_BRIGHTNESS / 100 ))
    echo $TARGET_BRIGHTNESS | sudo tee "$BRIGHTNESS_PATH" > /dev/null
}

# Adjust brightness logic
if [ "$CURRENT_PERCENT" -lt 50 ]; then
    set_brightness 60
    sleep 0.5
    set_brightness "$CURRENT_PERCENT"
else
    TARGET_PERCENT=$(( CURRENT_PERCENT + 10 ))
    if [ "$TARGET_PERCENT" -gt 100 ]; then
        TARGET_PERCENT=100
    fi
    set_brightness "$TARGET_PERCENT"
    sleep 0.5
    set_brightness "$CURRENT_PERCENT"
fi

Make a systemd service

Make a systemd service in /etc/systemd/system/brightness-fix.service to run the first script.

[Unit]
Description=Fix screen brightness on wake
After=multi-user.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/monitor_screen_power.sh
Restart=always
User=dhemas

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

and another one to run brightness-fix.sh after waking up from suspend/sleep, I put it in /etc/systemd/system/brightness-fix-wakeup.service.

[Unit]
Description=Fix screen brightness after wakeup
After=suspend.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/brightness_fix.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=suspend.target

Then register, enable, and start it.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload 
sudo systemctl enable brightness-fix.service
sudo systemctl enable brightness-fix-wakeup.service
sudo systemctl start brightness-fix.service

One more thing, you can add also /usr/local/bin/brightness_fix.sh to autostart (I’m using KDE) so it will run each time you login.