Sometimes the sensitivity issue can be resolved with the #3 solution offered below, but another solution is to just use manual backlight controls and stop the automatic lighting adjustments. Sometimes adjusting the positioning of the MacBook is not enough, and I’ve had experience with a few particularly stubborn MacBook Air keyboards whose backlight would simply not respond well to external lighting conditions. Solution #2: Control the Key Backlighting Manually Prevent the bright light source from hitting the camera area and the keyboard will be backlit again. Simply shine a flashlight or bright light near the FaceTime camera at the top of the screen, and the backlit keyboard will go dark.

If you’ve never experienced this yourself you can test it out fairly easily, even in a pitch black room. This is a feature, not a bug, it’s intention is to automatically disable the backlighting when it’s not needed and it wouldn’t be visible anyway, like when using a MacBook outdoors in the sun. The solution to this is simple enough: adjust the Mac so that the source of bright lighting is no longer shining on the display and near the front-facing camera. In some situations, direct lighting, bright lights, sun light, or a glare can shine directly on the light sensor on the MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, and when this happens the illumination indicator and controls become locked. Solution #1: Adjust the Mac & Light Sensor The simplest way to check that keyboard backlighting is enabled is to try and adjust the backlighting up to make it brighter, which is typically done by hitting the Mac laptops ‘F6’ key. More often than not you’ll be able to resolve the situation rather quickly and easily.ģ Tips for How to Fix Keyboard Backlighting on MacBook Pro or Airīefore anything else, make sure that your Mac laptop supports keyboard backlighting (virtually every vaguely new model MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or MacBook does), and that keyboard backlighting is enabled. If you discover that the keyboard backlighting is not working on your MacBook Air or MacBook Pro keyboard, then follow the troubleshooting steps detailed below.

There are a few possible reasons for the backlighting to stop working on a MacBook Pro, MacBook, or MacBook Air, with most offering simple resolutions.

Imac 27 late 2013 backlight not working