Looking for a way to set the MacBook screen dimming delay

Question

What I need is to extend the delay before the display dims. I will often read a page full of text and the screen will dim, and I have to touch the trackpad. It gets annoying when trying to take notes or do homework.

This is for a 13" 2008 MacBook Aluminum.

I am aware of the pmset halfdim switch. That switch corresponds to the automatically reduce the brightness of the display before sleep in the Energy Saver preferences pane. But it's not what I need. I do like the feature, but I'd just like to extend it 15-20 seconds.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I'm not aware of a way to set the dimming time directly. You could always just increase the Display Sleep time in the Energy Saver preferences and then manually put the display to sleep when you're walking away from the machine. That's done with the combination ctrl - shift - eject

Answer 2

The best 3rd-party based solution for you is to use Caffeine.

About Caffeine: A tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Hold down the Command key while clicking to show the menu.