Why do some videos on Instagram get brighter?

If you’re here, that means you’ve noticed the brightness shift in certain videos on Instagram. While we’d love to say there’s an easy fix for this, it’s a little bit more complicated than that. In fact, it has to do with the uploader’s settings for their video and how they recorded it. Let’s go over why some Instagram videos get brighter.

Why do some videos get brighter on Instagram?

When watching some videos and Reels on Instagram, you may notice that your display brightness increases automatically. In many cases, the glaring brightness and overexposure can irritate your eyes. This is seemingly more prevalent on iPhone devices, though some Android devices also experience this.

Unfortunately, there is no quick fix for this on the viewer’s end.

Videos shot in HDR — or High Dynamic Range — automatically adjust your display’s brightness when viewed on Instagram. As mentioned, this issue seems to affect Apple users more, and there is currently no device setting that allows you to disable the automatic brightness increase.

Can you disable HDR videos from raising brightness on Instagram?

Within Instagram, there is no way to disallow HDR videos from automatically raising your screen’s brightness. However, you can disable auto-brightness in your device settings for general use cases. This won’t affect the videos on Instagram increasing your brightness, but it will make it so you can manually control your screen’s brightness. This way, even when you’re outdoors, your surroundings won’t affect your device’s screen brightness.

To do so on your iPhone:

1. Open Settings.
2. Go to Accessibility.
3. Within Accessibility, tap Display & Text Size.
4.  Toggle off Auto-Brightness.

Hopefully Instagram adds a way to disable HDR in the future, and we’ll update this article as soon as something changes.