Brightness reducing automatically on my wife's iphone 14 promax

Head over to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size and check that “Auto-Brightness” is turned off.

All the new iPhones have OLED screens in them which really don’t like to be driven hard. It degrades the chemistry of the light emitting layer of the screen and leads to burn in and premature aging of the panel. Apple will be doing some behind the scenes magic to try and lengthen the life of the panel. This might explain the dimming after a period of high brightness. If that is whats going on, OLED might not be the technology for her which is a shame because of the high contrast of OLED. When I had some vision, high contrast OLED’s were incredibly visible to me but LCD’s will be able to maintain high brightness without needing to dim. If thats not whats going on then ignore everything I said but I thought it was worth making you aware of this possibility. If this is what’s happening though. It might be worth turning on the setting to reduce blue light. I forget what it’s called but the one you are meant to turn on leading up to bedtime. It reduces the blue light which should hopefully stop the phone trying to protect the panel as much as its the chemicals that emit blue light which are most unstable and degrade first.

I think on the setting for point and speak within magnificationthere is setting to use flash light to make easy to see. Check if that is also on the feature she is using.

She’ll be better off with an LCD screen in that case but then she’ll lose the incredible contrast of an OLED. I did have another thought. What if she starts with the brightness at around 60% that way, her eyes won’t have got used to the incredibly bright screen at 100% it would also mean the screen won’t try to protect itself for longer. Even if it’s 80% it will still give her longer than it would have at 100% is 80% workable but not ideal? In that case it might work? Workable but not ideal for a longer time might be better than ideal for a short time. Just some thoughts a play around with. I’m sure Apple will be able to illuminate the situation if you’ll pardon the pun.

The 11 pro has an OLED but the 11 still had an LCD. Maybe you could buy an 11 or 10R that she can keep just for magnifying things? They shouldn’t be too expensive these days and it should stay at 100% brightness as long as the phone doesn’t get hot or battery age to the point it has to reduce power consumption to keep the phone stable.

If you have the flashlight turned on, the thing being magnified will be brighter on screen which might help your wife. Might be wrong but thats how I understood it.

Mosen did a podcast on it and other features in iOS 17.

Thomas just did one recent. Maybe his will help.

Very odd that this setting is not there for you.

For me, it's the last option on this page, directly after the toggle for “Reduce White Point.”

It's a setting which if enabled would explain the behavior that you describe.

I have an iPhone 14 pro max. Go to Settings/Display and Brightness and toggle off automatic. It won’t do that anymore

Like Cobbler, Settings - accessibility - Display and text size - Auto brightness. It’s there for me. Might be worth having another check. It’s right at the bottom and would also explain the behaviour. If it works then it’s better than my explanation which requires a new phone with a different display type. I think it’s to do with preserving OLED panel health but Cobblers idea would be much less hassle.