The Pebble's screen is always on. The display is a transflective memory LCD, which means it holds whatever's on it without using power and stays readable in daylight just like a regular wristwatch. The backlight exists for one job: making the screen visible in low light. It is not used to "wake" the watch the way an Apple Watch or similar OLED screen wakes when you raise your wrist.

The backlight can be triggered in several ways:

These live under Watch Settings → Display in the mobile app. Anything you change here syncs to the watch immediately, and vice versa.

Master switch for the backlight. When off, the backlight will not turn on for any reason: not for motion, not for tap, not for notifications, not even when you press a button in the dark. The rest of the backlight settings below are hidden in the watch's own Settings app when this is off.

The only reason to keep this off is if you want to fully commit to never lighting up the display, usually for maximum battery life or to be invisible at night.

When on, the watch only allows the backlight to fire when it's actually dark out. If you're already in a bright room or outside in daylight, the backlight stays off even if you flick your wrist or tap the screen, because the screen is already readable without it.

Turn this off if you want the backlight to fire on every triggered event regardless of ambient light. This drains battery more aggressively.

The wrist-flick trigger. When on, a deliberate wrist motion toward your face will light up the backlight for the configured Timeout (see below). This is the most common way to read the watch in the dark.

Turn it off if accidental flicks at night (turning over in your sleep, brushing past something) are lighting up your wrist and bothering you, or your partner.

When on, the watch uses the ambient light sensor to continuously scale the backlight brightness. In near-pitch-dark conditions it dims way down so the light doesn't blast you; in dim-but-not-dark conditions it brightens. The Backlight Intensity setting below becomes the ceiling rather than the absolute value.

When off, the backlight just uses whatever brightness you've set in Backlight Intensity, every time it fires.

The brightness level the backlight uses. The values correspond to roughly 10%, 25%, 50%, and 100% of full brightness.

What screen interaction will trigger the backlight:

This is one of the touch options most often misconfigured by new users coming from a smartphone-style touchscreen, where any tap is expected to do something. On Pebble, the default is intentionally Double Tap to keep accidental wakes down.

The color of the LED used for the backlight. Presets include Red, Orange, Yellow, and other common colors, plus a hex/RGB picker for any custom shade. Useful at night if you want a softer red glow that doesn't disturb dark adaptation or a partner.

An individual app on the watch can override the backlight color while it's running (for example, a navigation app might flash blue), but otherwise this is what you'll see.

On Round 2 and 2 Duo this setting does not appear because their backlights are not color-tunable.

How long the backlight stays on after it gets triggered. The default is 3 seconds, which is enough to glance at the time without leaving the light on long enough to drain noticeable battery. The watch's own settings menu (see Part 2) presents this as fixed choices of 3, 5, or 8 seconds; the mobile app exposes the underlying value with finer control.

Reachable from the watchface by pressing SELECT to open the app launcher, then Settings → Display → Backlight.

The watch's Backlight submenu is a subset of what's in the mobile app, presented as a single list. Anything you change here syncs to the phone, and vice versa. Live values for sensor readings and dynamic backlight percentage are refreshed every half-second while the menu is open.

On / Off. Master switch. On Pebble Time 2 with Dynamic Backlight Intensity on, the row also shows the current live brightness percentage, e.g. "On - 47%".

When set to Off, all of the rows below collapse out of view.

On / Off. Same as Backlight Motion in the mobile app.

Double Tap / Tap / Off. Same as Backlight on Tap in the mobile app.

Only appears on watches that have a touchscreen (PT2 and Round 2), and only when the global Touch setting (Settings → Display → Touch) is on. If you've turned off Touch globally, this row is hidden because there's no functional difference to set.

On / Off. Same as Ambient Light Sensor in the mobile app. When on, the row also shows the current live raw sensor reading in parentheses, e.g. "On (1432)". Higher numbers mean brighter ambient light.

On / Off. Same as Dynamic Backlight Intensity in the mobile app.

Only appears on Pebble Time 2.

Low / Medium / High / Blinding. Same as Backlight Intensity in the mobile app. The row title changes to "Max Intensity" when Dynamic Backlight is on, to make it clear the value is a ceiling and not a fixed level.

3 Seconds / 5 Seconds / 8 Seconds. The on-watch interface only lets you pick from these three; if you need anything outside this range, use the mobile app to set an exact millisecond value.

A few backlight-adjacent settings live outside the main Display section because they're conceptually tied to other features. They behave the way you'd expect from their names, but it's worth knowing they exist.

When on, the backlight fires briefly when a new notification lands on the watch. Useful for catching alerts in low-light settings without needing to flick your wrist; annoying in a dark cinema. The Ambient Light Sensor setting still applies, so if the room is bright the backlight won't fire even if this is on.

By default, the watch turns off motion-triggered backlight while Quiet Time is active, on the assumption that you don't want to be lighting up your wrist in the middle of the night every time you roll over. Turning this on overrides that and keeps motion backlight active even during Quiet Time.

The notification backlight from above is also suppressed during Quiet Time (along with notifications themselves), regardless of this setting.

You can bind backlight controls to Quick Launch slots so you can toggle them with a button hold or wrist gesture. Set these up in Watch Settings → Quick Launch in the mobile app, or in Settings → Quick Launch on the watch.

Two Quick Launch options are dedicated to the backlight:

Tapping this Quick Launch toggles the master Backlight setting on or off. The watch shows a confirmation prompt ("Turn On Backlight?" / "Turn Off Backlight?") before applying the change, and confirms the new state afterward.

This is the "kill switch" version, the same as flipping the toggle in settings. Useful for users who like to keep the backlight off most of the time and only turn it on situationally.

Tapping this Quick Launch toggles the Backlight Motion (wake on wrist flick) setting on or off. Same prompt-and-confirm pattern as above, but the prompts say "Turn On Motion Backlight?" / "Turn Off Motion Backlight?" and the result confirms "Motion Backlight On" or "Motion Backlight Off".

This is the more nuanced version: use it when you want the backlight available for button presses and notifications but want to suppress wrist-flick wake-ups, for example in a meeting or in bed.