Night colors, brightness and "screen saver"

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1

So I noticed that night colors does not work properly, specifically, the screen brightness is messing up my experience from time to time.

With the introduction of “screen brightness” on the night color settings in plasma 6 I have noticed that the brightness changes by itself.
If I set it to 80%, it will sometimes change, can not figure out what is triggering it, always to a lower value.

I have no idea how to provide more info about this, it just happens sporadically and it’s not like it throws an error or shows anything in the logs.

I found this bug report and it sounds like it is being blamed on something else, but this has been introduced in plasma 6 so…
I run wayland and have not checked if it happens on x11.

Possibly related could be the “dimming” of the screen after a time of inactivity.
Also possibly related, if the screen goes to sleep (not the computer, just the screen timeout) I can no longer bring it back with mouse movement, I HAVE to click, either with mouse buttons or on the keyboard.

Another thing I have noticed is that the application is probably active 24/7 compared to how it was before.
If I configure it to “show when relevant” on plasma 5 it dissapeared from my “taskbar” during the day time (when it was not active). That is no longer the case, it is constantly showing on the taskbar, and that indicates to me it is active during the day and the changes it makes is on the brightness.

I have nvidia GPU, but my AMD CPU does all the rendering on my screen unless I call my gpu with prime-run so this is most likely NOT an nvidia thing.
Also, the person in the bug report does not have nvidia.

Any suggestions?

2

I figured it out, but not sure where and on what to report it, or if it even is a plasma thing.

It IS the “dimming” of the screen.
In the system tray “night colors” it was set to 80%.
The screen goes “dimmed” after 5 mins, if I do not stop that immediately within seconds, the dimming will not “go back”.

I can open the “night colors” and move the 80% dimming a little, and the monitor goes bright again.

I just now after realizing this, opened my settings > energy saving and realized there is a “Change screen brightness” checkbox that was not filled in, and set to 70%.
I clicked the checkbox and put the brighness to 80% and pressed Apply and the screen went even brighter.

So, multiple ways to alter the brightness, and they do not seem to be connected.

Can someone clarify this?

And also, where do I report the bug about the “dimming after 5 mins” not working correctly. Is it even a KDE thing?

Could be an AMD thing, or even a Wayland thing. I have not tried this on x11 since I no longer (read. extremely rarely) use it.

3

Night light doesn’t do anything with brightness. The reason the Brightness & Color applet is always shown is to make the brightness control available, which now happens to live in the same applet as the night light feature when previously it was the battery applet.

So whatever you’re experiencing is not about night light but about the “Display and Brightness” controls in your power management settings (and yes, these are a KDE thing). I’ll take another look at it later.

4

You are correct, I thought it could be connected since I found 2 settings showing different things, and the “brightness setting” in night colors MOVES. But that makes sense after your explanation.
I guess now it’s a feature for me, since it is the easiest way to return the brightness to it’s correct levels. :yum:

It is the dimming of the monitor, but I can not get it to “error” consistently.
If I let the monitor go to sleep completely, sometimes it returns “correctly” sometimes it does not.
If I figure out some kind of correlation I will add it here.

On a side note.
I’m not sure I like the added brightness control in the applet (even though I use it as a feature now), because I suspect that is the reason it never disappears from my system tray (when set to “shown when relevant”), even though the night colors are inactive during the day. That was not the case on plasma 5.

5

@nclarius
Additional information:
It kept happening so I clicked the “Change screen brightness” in the power management setting, and so far so good. Only been running a few hours, but each time I wake up the monitor, or “stop the dimming after 5 mins by moving my mouse” it has always returned to “normal” now.
This might have fixed it, but if it happens again I will report back.

Maybe the call to “restore brightness” gets confused sometimes if that option is not selected.

Update 2
Nope, still happens.

Caught this in the log:

20/03/2024 19.45	org_kde_powerdevil	dh=Display_Handle[i2c-7: fd=25], Replacing adjusted sleep multiplier 0,30 with 1.00 for SE_POST_WRITE or SE_POST_SAVE_SETTINGS
20/03/2024 19.45	org_kde_powerdevil	dh=Display_Handle[i2c-7: fd=25], Replacing adjusted sleep multiplier 0,30 with 1.00 for SE_POST_WRITE or SE_POST_SAVE_SETTINGS
20/03/2024 19.45	org_kde_powerdevil	dh=Display_Handle[i2c-7: fd=25], Replacing adjusted sleep multiplier 0,30 with 1.00 for SE_POST_WRITE or SE_POST_SAVE_SETTINGS
20/03/2024 19.45	org_kde_powerdevil	dh=Display_Handle[i2c-7: fd=25], Replacing adjusted sleep multiplier 0,30 with 1.00 for SE_POST_WRITE or SE_POST_SAVE_SETTINGS
20/03/2024 19.45	org_kde_powerdevil	dh=Display_Handle[i2c-7: fd=25], Replacing adjusted sleep multiplier 0,30 with 1.00 for SE_POST_WRITE or SE_POST_SAVE_SETTINGS
20/03/2024 19.45	org_kde_powerdevil	dh=Display_Handle[i2c-7: fd=25], Replacing adjusted sleep multiplier 0,30 with 1.00 for SE_POST_WRITE or SE_POST_SAVE_SETTINGS
20/03/2024 19.45	org_kde_powerdevil	dh=Display_Handle[i2c-7: fd=25], Replacing adjusted sleep multiplier 0,30 with 1.00 for SE_POST_WRITE or SE_POST_SAVE_SETTINGS
20/03/2024 19.45	org_kde_powerdevil	dh=Display_Handle[i2c-7: fd=25], Replacing adjusted sleep multiplier 0,30 with 1.00 for SE_POST_WRITE or SE_POST_SAVE_SETTINGS
20/03/2024 19.45	org_kde_powerdevil	dh=Display_Handle[i2c-7: fd=25], Replacing adjusted sleep multiplier 0,30 with 1.00 for SE_POST_WRITE or SE_POST_SAVE_SETTINGS
20/03/2024 19.45	pipewire	mod.client-node: 0x5d2de45f7760: unknown peer 0x5d2de48ea230 fd:57
20/03/2024 19.46	plasmashell	file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.brightness/contents/ui/PopupDialog.qml:25:18: QML ScrollView: ScrollView only supports Flickable types as its contentItem
20/03/2024 19.46	plasmashell	qrc:/qt/qml/org/kde/plasma/components/ScrollView.qml:31:9: QML WheelHandler: target must be a QQuickFlickable
20/03/2024 19.46	plasmashell	file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.brightness/contents/ui/NightColorItem.qml:30:18: QML RowLayout: Layout polish loop detected for QQuickRowLayout(0x5a362b36a8f0, id="contentItem", parent=0x5a362837b860, geometry=6,6 0x71). Aborting after two iterations.
20/03/2024 19.46	org_kde_powerdevil	dh=Display_Handle[i2c-7: fd=25], Replacing adjusted sleep multiplier 0,30 with 1.00 for SE_POST_WRITE or SE_POST_SAVE_SETTINGS
20/03/2024 19.46	org_kde_powerdevil	dh=Display_Handle[i2c-7: fd=25], Replacing adjusted sleep multiplier 0,30 with 1.00 for SE_POST_WRITE or SE_POST_SAVE_SETTINGS
20/03/2024 19.46	org_kde_powerdevil	dh=Display_Handle[i2c-7: fd=25], Replacing adjusted sleep multiplier 0,30 with 1.00 for SE_POST_WRITE or SE_POST_SAVE_SETTINGS
20/03/2024 19.46	org_kde_powerdevil	dh=Display_Handle[i2c-7: fd=25], Replacing adjusted sleep multiplier 0,30 with 1.00 for SE_POST_WRITE or SE_POST_SAVE_SETTINGS
20/03/2024 19.46	org_kde_powerdevil	dh=Display_Handle[i2c-7: fd=25], Replacing adjusted sleep multiplier 0,30 with 1.00 for SE_POST_WRITE or SE_POST_SAVE_SETTINGS
20/03/2024 19.46	org_kde_powerdevil	dh=Display_Handle[i2c-7: fd=25], Replacing adjusted sleep multiplier 0,30 with 1.00 for SE_POST_WRITE or SE_POST_SAVE_SETTINGS
20/03/2024 19.46	org_kde_powerdevil	dh=Display_Handle[i2c-7: fd=25], Replacing adjusted sleep multiplier 0,30 with 1.00 for SE_POST_WRITE or SE_POST_SAVE_SETTINGS
20/03/2024 19.46	org_kde_powerdevil	dh=Display_Handle[i2c-7: fd=25], Replacing adjusted sleep multiplier 0,30 with 1.00 for SE_POST_WRITE or SE_POST_SAVE_SETTINGS
20/03/2024 19.46	org_kde_powerdevil	dh=Display_Handle[i2c-7: fd=25], Replacing adjusted sleep multiplier 0,30 with 1.00 for SE_POST_WRITE or SE_POST_SAVE_SETTINGS
20/03/2024 19.46	pipewire	mod.client-node: 0x5d2de45f7760: unknown peer 0x5d2de48ea230 fd:57
20/03/2024 19.46	pipewire	mod.client-node: 0x5d2de48e9b10: unknown peer 0x5d2de455df60 fd:64
20/03/2024 19.46	rtkit-daemon	Supervising 8 threads of 5 processes of 1 users.
20/03/2024 19.46	rtkit-daemon	Supervising 8 threads of 5 processes of 1 users.
20/03/2024 19.46	rtkit-daemon	Supervising 8 threads of 5 processes of 1 users.
20/03/2024 19.46	rtkit-daemon	Supervising 8 threads of 5 processes of 1 users.
20/03/2024 19.47	plasmashell	file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.kicker/contents/ui/RunnerResultsList.qml:53:9: Unable to assign [undefined] to QQuickText::VAlignment
20/03/2024 19.47	plasmashell	file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.kicker/contents/ui/RunnerResultsList.qml:53:9: Unable to assign [undefined] to QQuickText::VAlignment
20/03/2024 19.47	plasmashell	qt.qml.context: file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.kicker/contents/ui/ItemListDelegate.qml:267:5 Parameter "event" is not declared. Injection of parameters into signal handlers is deprecated. Use JavaScript functions with formal parameters instead.
20/03/2024 19.47	plasmashell	file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.kicker/contents/ui/ItemListView.qml:153: TypeError: Cannot read property 'forceActiveFocus' of null
20/03/2024 19.47	plasmashell	file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.kicker/contents/ui/ItemListView.qml:153: TypeError: Cannot read property 'forceActiveFocus' of null
20/03/2024 19.47	plasmashell	file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.kicker/contents/ui/ItemListView.qml:153: TypeError: Cannot read property 'forceActiveFocus' of null
20/03/2024 19.47	systemd	Started KSystemLog - System Log Viewer.
20/03/2024 19.47	kdesud	kf.i18n: KLocalizedString: Domain is not set for this string, translation will not work. Please see https://api.kde.org/frameworks/ki18n/html/prg_guide.html msgid: "Copyright (c) 1999,2000 Geert Jansen" msgid_plural: "" msgctxt: ""
20/03/2024 19.47	kdesud	kf.i18n: KLocalizedString: Domain is not set for this string, translation will not work. Please see https://api.kde.org/frameworks/ki18n/html/prg_guide.html msgid: "Daemon used by kdesu" msgid_plural: "" msgctxt: ""
20/03/2024 19.47	kdesud	kf.i18n: KLocalizedString: Domain is not set for this string, translation will not work. Please see https://api.kde.org/frameworks/ki18n/html/prg_guide.html msgid: "KDE su daemon" msgid_plural: "" msgctxt: ""
20/03/2024 19.47	kdesud	kf.i18n: KLocalizedString: Domain is not set for this string, translation will not work. Please see https://api.kde.org/frameworks/ki18n/html/prg_guide.html msgid: "Author" msgid_plural: "" msgctxt: ""
20/03/2024 19.47	kdesud	kf.i18n: KLocalizedString: Domain is not set for this string, translation will not work. Please see https://api.kde.org/frameworks/ki18n/html/prg_guide.html msgid: "Geert Jansen" msgid_plural: "" msgctxt: ""
6

Update 3.

Since I do not know what is going on behind the doors, the latest update I got made it so the system never enters “screen saver”, ie the monitor goes black, but the mouse pointer is still there and the monitor does not sleep.

I still offer to provide logs, but you have to tell me what you want from me if that is the case.

7

Black screen with mouse cursor could be Bug 483163, which happens when the lock screen appears. Since Plasma 6.0.2, instances of this bug don’t seem related to power management anymore (and seem to happen only on X11).

Your earlier report with aborted dimming sounds a bit like Bug 470664. Unfortunately the logs for the dimming action in the power management service aren’t very useful at the moment, I have minor improvements in a recent MR but I don’t think that’s going to solve your issue in particular.

1 Like
8

The powerdevil bug 470664 sounds exactly what I was experiencing on plasma 6.0.1 (and I think I was on 6.0.2 2 days ago and the bug was present). I am on 6.0.3 and will see if it still presents itself.

I will keep an eye on the bug report and add information there if I am able to find/provide anything new.

Edit
Actually no, I just checked the logs.
I was on plasma 6.0.3 already on March 30 so my report of it happening 2 days ago was on 6.0.3.