In beamer presentations I like to dim all of the miniframes for the first and last few slides of the talk (slides with introduction, conclusions, references, etc.; things that don't fit into any particular subsection of the talk). I used to be able to accomplish this by following each `\section` command with a `\stepcounter{subsection}` command, and also including a `\stepcounter{section}` command at the point in the talk where I'd like miniframes to be dimmed for all subsequent slides. This no longer works, and I am not sure why.

MWE:

```
\documentclass{beamer}

\usetheme[]{Madrid}
\useoutertheme[footline=empty,subsection=false]{miniframes}

\title{an awesome talk}
\author{a froody dude}
\date{\today}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}[plain]
\titlepage
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{slide 0}
All miniframes dimmed, as desired.
\end{frame}

\section{section 1}
\stepcounter{subsection}

\begin{frame}{slide 1}
content 1
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{slide 2}
content 2
\end{frame}

\section{section 2}
\stepcounter{subsection}

\begin{frame}{slide 3}
content 3
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{slide 4}
content 4
\end{frame}

\section{section 3}
\stepcounter{subsection}

\begin{frame}{slide 5}
shading on miniframes is wrong
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{slide 6}
shading on miniframes is wrong
\end{frame}

\stepcounter{section} % This command used to result in the desired effect.

\begin{frame}{slide 5}
all miniframes should be dimmed
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}{slide 6}
all miniframes should be dimmed
\end{frame}

\end{document}

```

[Here](https://imgur.com/a/LBui6FQ) is what I see when I compile the above document. It's hard to tell in the above image due to the compression, but the shading on slides 7

![seven](https://i.imgur.com/MRQulEq.png)

and 8

![eight](https://i.imgur.com/XaXxPJ6.png)

is messed up.

I am running Xubuntu 18.04, TexLive 2017.