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Every night I start some music/audiobook/whatever in iTunes and then reduce the brightness of the screen to zero to listen to the audio without seeing a bright screen. For the past few weeks (I think), my MacBook (2007) automatically increases the brightness to at least level one after five or ten minutes requiring me to press the lower brightness button again to switch the screen back to dark.

Any idea why it does that?

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I have a similar problem too since upgrading to Lion. I think the ambient light sensor is a little bit more sensitive now. Try to disable the "automatically adjust brightness" option in the display preference? – Enrico Susatyo Aug 15 '11 at 13:12

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The 2007 MacBook (without "Pro") doesn't even have an ambient light sensor, so that one can be ruled out. My guess would be that some software, maybe even the system itself, turns the background light back on to let you know that the machine is still running. If you're on Snow Leopard or Lion, you could use the Screen Saver prefs to assign a "Hot Corner" to "Display Sleep" which turns off the display without putting the computer to sleep.

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Or press shift-control-eject. ;-) – dan8394 Aug 15 '11 at 14:12
Good one :) I love keyboard shortcuts! – Kiezpro Aug 18 '11 at 13:54
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Try Resetting the systems PRAM. This can be done by powering off first, then power on and hold CMD+OPT+P+R at the same time through three boot chimes.

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Do you have an opinion on why this could work or are you proposing it as a general redemy? – Andrew J. Brehm Aug 16 '11 at 9:28

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