reMarkable Paper Pro has backlight – which I find very useful. Some people are wishing it to be a bit more – brighter. There is a hack for brightness on Paper Pro – we are going to look into it.
Before we even begin – you are doing this at your own risk, I cannot be held responsible for damage of device, property, health, mental health or any damage imaginable. Check the entire guide and make your own decision if you are going to try this or not.
Since this is not support by reMarkable, there is a chance that you can lower you device lifespan, damage it or destroy it.
Prerequisites
For this to work, you will need to have a Windows 10/11 machine with WSL enabled (Putty should also be fine), MacOS or Linux machine. Your Paper Pro should have Developer Mode enabled and you have to be able to connect to your device via SSH.
How to enable Developer Mode on reMarkable Paper Pro – my guide is here
How to access reMarkable Paper Pro via SSH – my guide is here
Enabling extra brightness on Paper Pro
We will connect to our Paper Pro, make a little service that will run even after restart and make our Paper Pro a little brighter.
Let’s start. First we will connect to Paper Pro via SSH (please follow my SSH guide until end, you can skip WiFi part)
ssh remarkableNext, we will need to make filesystem on Paper Pro writable. After you are connected to Paper Pro run following on it:
umount -l /etc
mount -o remount,rw /
Next, we will create a systemd service that will manage brightness (tweak-brightness-slider.service). Use CTRL+C and CTRL+V to copy and paste this into terminal.
cat <<EOF > /etc/systemd/system/tweak-brightness-slider.service
[Unit]
Description=Set linear_mapping to 'yes' for backlight
After=multi-user.target
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/bin/sh -c 'echo yes > /sys/class/backlight/rm_frontlight/linear_mapping'
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF
Let’s check if we managed to write anything in /etc/systemd/system/tweak-brightness-slider.service
We will run:
cat /etc/systemd/system/tweak-brightness-slider.serviceOk, there is something in that service
We will now reload systemcl
systemctl daemon-reloadAnd make our service start, and enable it so that it runs even after Paper Pro is restarted
systemctl start tweak-brightness-slider.service
systemctl enable --now tweak-brightness-slider.service
Reboot your Paper Pro. After boot, you will see the “old” brigthess settings, then after maybe a minute, screen will get brighter. It takes some time for service to start, so be patient.
How to disable/remove brightness tweak?
If you don’t like new settings, it can be disabled and removed.
First, we will first mount file system
umount -l /etc
mount -o remount,rw /Next, we will disable the service we created
systemctl disable tweak-brightness-slider.service
We will now remove service file that is located in /etc/systemd/system/tweak-brightness-slider.service
rm -f /etc/systemd/system/tweak-brightness-slider.service
Reboot your Paper Pro, and if we run after reboot following command:
systemctl status tweak-brightness-slider.serviceUnit tweak-brightness-slider.service could not be found means we did good, and service is removed.
Conclusion
If the brightness of the Paper Pro is not enough for you, this is solution, just be aware that it will probably impact battery life of your Paper Pro, and perhaps, maybe can give you screen/hardware problems (I’m not expert in that part). So, assess your risks of using this.
Special thanks to users u/lmarso47 and u/ThisIsFlorianK from Reddit for pointing this out. Here is the original reddit thread – https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/1g0x5tm/comment/lrewrmi/?share_id=DF2aVR1TZMmieps2XllMZ&utm_content=2&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1
reMarkable Paper Pro guides
Remarkable Paper Pro – how to enable Developer Mode
How to connect to reMarkable Paper Pro via SSH
How to transfer files to reMarkable Paper Pro (without cloud)
How to backup (and restore) files on reMarkable Paper Pro (without cloud)
How to change is sleeping screen on reMarkable Paper Pro