Dell XPS 13 9300 Screen dimming and brightening "randomly"

This page should help and the setting is in the BIOS as the page states.

Your fix is not for the new 9300 model (year 2020)

I think I have finally found a solution to this annoying problem on my XPS 13 9300 (2020 model). After a day of use and a lot of switching between apps with dark and light backgrounds, I haven't seen a single automatic brightness change anymore.

1) Go to Windows Display Settings and disable "Change brightness automatically when lightning changes".

2) In Windows Display Settings disable the HDR Games and App function.

3) Go to the Intel Graphics Command Center and go to the System page. Go to the Power tab and disable all settings. The setting that appears to do the trick is the "Enhanced Power Saving" checkbox. Even though that checkbox is greyed out by turning off one of the other settings, it appears to remain active. So first turn off this checkbox before turning off the other options so that it is in the disabled position before it's greyed out. This might be a bug in the Intel Graphics Control center.

4) I'm not sure if this last step is necessary but I did it anyway. In the Intel Graphics Command Center go to the Video page. Create a custom profile and disable all checkboxes below. Keep this custom profile selected.

For me I found it was disabling number 2 that fixed it. 

2) In Windows Display Settings disable the HDR Games and App function.

The gaming HDR being enabled really makes normal use of the laptop intolerable due to large variations when switching between content of different brightness (dark/light etc)

This setting was enabled by default with my new Dell when I think it should be an optional thing. 

Need a bios fix. Ubuntu has a flag for it in dconf but its ignored.

On my 9300 with the matt non-touch 1080p screen it was option number 3 that worked for me. I was caught out by disabling the main "Display Power Savings" slider without first disabling the "Enhanced Power Saving - Dims bright images for power saving" option. As you say, it looks like it's disabled but it's not.

Otherwise I was able to leave the Windows auto brightness setting intact, as this is generally handy. The issue with this particular "enhanced power saving" feature is that it completely warps contrast and colour when trying to work with photos and videos.

Thanks for your post.

Thank you for this!!!! The screen was driving me CRAZY. I already had this issue with my XPS 7590, but fixed that with the Intel Command settings, but this XPS 9300 would NOT stop dimming/brightening on its own. I attributed to a Windows 1909 bug or related problem. Not only did disabling the useless HDR "feature" in Windows Display fix the dimming, it also fixed this really annoying screen flash/flicker EVERY TIME I PLUGGED IN/OUT any power source.

Seconding the Windows HD Color settings/HDR thing. I also disabled all the various options in Intel Graphics Command Centre, but it was this that really fixed the issue - or maybe it was the turning off of the HDR setting that triggered the Intel settings to actually be updated, I don't know. It's plausible that in fact the right trick is to disable all the Intel nonsense and then then Windows nonsense... Also http://tylerwatt12.com/dc/ from a similar thread on the topic was very useful for proving that I wasn't imagining it.

So it appears not to be anything to do with the BIOS or Dell, at least in my instance (the BIOS on this 9300 is up to date as of 30/05/20 and there's no mention of adaptive brightness etc there).

For me it was the "Display Power Savings" that did the trick. Turned it off.

On my Alienware laptop, the screen auto-dimming was caused by the Tobii eye-tracking software.  As I don;t use the program, I just deleted it.  Problem solved.

You need to go to Intel Graphic Control Centre- System Settings- Power-On Battery- Display Power Savings should Turn ON- Power Efficiency on 1. Works on my XPS 13 9300 - 3294!

Hi guys, 

I've specially created an account to confirm how I fixed the issue. The previous XPS13 had an special BIOS update to disable the "DBC" Dynamic Backlight Control. 

However the newer version doesn't have such a toggle in the BIOS. I've tried literally everything to get rid of the automatic changing brightness or backlight as it was driving me crazy.

BUT! It is disabled now! When opening the Graphic Command Center of Intel, under system -> power:

There is a toggle, "Display Power Savings". It is bugged! This is the whole freakin' problem.

Whenever you select Off at Display Power Savings, the underlying two toggles are still working. So you need to enable the Display Power Savings first, to toggle the first "Power Efficiency" and slide to 1 and disable the "Enhanced Power Saving" before you set the toggle of Display Power Savings to Off. 

You don't need to disable the other toggles or what you've just read on the net. It's a bug in the Intel Command Center application.

This solution is good ... thank you !

I followed your suggestion on my brand new Inspiron 14 7400 and it's not helping...