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Fixing annoying blue standby lights
- gka 3y agoIt may not be feasible in some cases (e.g. chargers) but unplugging devices entirely may be smarter than taping LEDs. Not every device needs to be in standby all the time. my granddad was obsessed with reducing power consumption and had built actual light switches into his living room walls that cut power for all TV devices at once. So in a way, the annoying LEDs also serve as a reminder that there’s a device consuming energy that we may not even be using 90% of the time.
- mandyharhalos23 3y ago[dead]
- quechimba 3y agoI've been using black diamond headlamps. In recent years they replaced their battery indicator LEDs to some really strong blue ones. I use the red light a lot, and when I turn it off, the battery indicator LEDs will light up the entire room. I have covered mine with electrical tape, but the blue light shines through the plastic so it doesn't really work and my headlamp looks ugly. I don't know why they would do this. The first headlamp I got from them had red, yellow and green battery indicator LEDs, now they have 3 blue ones. It's really annoying. I should probably write them an email and ask them to fix it.
- JohnFen 3y agoPersonally, I find fixing them to be easy: I remove the LED.
- Deborahluis 3y ago[dead]
- tanseydavid 3y agoI have two devices on my desk (in my bedroom) that each have one these "bright-as-the-brightest-star" blue LEDs and it is simply too much. I have multiple layers of blue packing tape over them to deal with it. I need "sleep hygiene" and for me that involves reducing sensory inputs to as close to zero as I can get.
- benson121 3y ago[dead]
- Baldbvrhunter 3y agogreat hack my pet peeve is flashing indicators, especially when it means "all normal"
- dmd 3y agoLooking at you, SuperMicro: Every other “normal” LED on our server room is green. Theirs is amber.
- tatersolid 3y agoWe have some Cisco kit at one office all from the same product line purchased at the same time. On the switches ”normal” link lights are green, but on the firewalls the “normal” link lights are amber! Our help desk gets a call about once a month from someone reporting the “orange lights” which are visible through a small window in a door.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoThat's evil.
- nathancahill 3y agoHow do you feel about the (more common in previous years) flashing indicators for disk activity?
- masklinn 3y agoIt made sense when HDDs were universal, it provided a quick check for a common cause of major slowdowns (you would then go hunt for the source of the IO). Also on most cases you can / could just not plug that header in. Not an option for external drives tho.
- chrismorgan 3y agoYou didn’t even need a light, you could hear the disk.
- dessant 3y agoLightDims solved the problem of bright and blinking status LEDs in our home, they sell sticker sheets in various colors that dim or completely block the light: https://www.lightdims.com/store.htm https://www.lightdims.com/store.htm
- chrismorgan 3y agoOr just use some mostly-opaque tape, such as masking tape or brown cellulose tape (which is what I remember using on one obnoxious external hard drive many years ago) and add more layers to dim it. Or use a black permanent marker. A great many households will already have one or the other of these already. But I presume that none of these would particularly serve the purpose of the article, allowing infrared signals to pass through. Can’t say I’ve encountered the combination of a bright LED and infrared receiver, myself.
- dessant 3y agoOf course, but these are thinner and prettier because of the pre-cut shapes.
- rcarmo 3y agoI just use the marker. It's been the best solution all around, especially since you can either dim or fully obscure the LEDs.
- masklinn 3y ago> Or use a black permanent marker. I've a USB charger with a blue led so bright permanent marker only dims it, even after several layers it still lights up the room.
- dgacmu 3y agoSeconded. I learned about these here a few years ago and have gone through two packages of them. The ability to dim for things you still want to kind of see is very nice, and as another person noted, the pre-cut shapes are more attractive. For example, I use them on the air filter level indicator where I still want to be able to see what it set to but don't want it lighting up the room much at night.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoHugged to death? Here is the Wayback version: https://web.archive.org/web/20240101100336/https://www.fullcircuit.com/blog/fixing-annoying-blue-standby-lights https://web.archive.org/web/20240101100336/https://www.fullc...
- dvh 3y agoI hate those blue retina blasters. Few years ago I bought USB disk and when I connected it to PC it had nice white light. Finally the blue LED fad is over, the white LED lights are the new cool. A year passed and I had to buy new motherboard. When I connected that same USB disk it suddenly light in bright blue because I connected it to USB 3 port that the new motherboard had.
- mrweasel 3y agoWhy is it that manufacturers go for blue or bright white LED indicators? I assume that they are cheap enough that it doesn't matter, but green would probably still be slightly cheaper. We have a USB charger that cannot be used in a bedroom, not that you should, but it can light up an entire room. Why not just have a tiny green LED? Apple is really good about not using bright LEDs in their product, or really any LED indicators (there might still be one in the magsafe). So why is it that every cheap random fly by night Chinese manufacturer feel the need to add a tiny blue torch to their products?
- masklinn 3y ago> We have a USB charger that cannot be used in a bedroom, not that you should, but it can light up an entire room. Had the same issue, thankfully a piece of black duct tape was heavy enough to fix the issue. Really annoying to have a device which is essentially unusable out of the box. > Apple is really good about not using bright LEDs in their product, or really any LED indicators (there might still be one in the magsafe). They do have an indicator led on the magsafe plug, which is either amber or green, and is pretty bright but easy to unplug. The old MBPs also used to have a white but pretty dimmed led "breathing" during sleep, it was quite pretty unless you wanted to sleep then it was annoying. If easy enough to put a thing in front. I also have a ugreen mini dock with a white led, no idea why. It's a passive dock, if it's plugged in it's on, I don't need to have a reminder.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wayvey 3y agoI think the latest MBP M1/2 also have it still.
- Liftyee 3y agoSpeculation: Perhaps they are trying to distinguish themselves from the "cheaper" products by using the "new" blue LEDs? IIRC the technology for them was figured out much later than green or red, so maybe there is a bit of leftover "futuristic" feel to them. The last time I saw a blue room-illuminator was on an ancient Belkin Bluetooth dongle. IMO the practice has gone out of style with most name brands (including Apple).
- flir 3y agoQuality Street were wrapped in opaque paper this year. TP-Link's TL-WPA4220 powerline extenders (and presumably other models) let you turn off the status LEDs in software (there should be a list of hardware that lets you do this).
- hindsightbias 3y agoWhen candy companies and tech companies collude we’re really doomed.
- xattt 3y agoThis is what they mean by chocolate chips.
- Fluorescence 3y agoI wish they would remember the setting though. I have turned their lights off multiple times but they are currently on. Any blip in power supply (power cut, fuse trip, maintenance work) and they come back so it's like trying to keep a tide at bay.
- newsclues 3y agoTape is cheap, removable and blocks light.
- cantSpellSober 3y agoand the author explains why it doesn't work for this use case
- radar1310 3y agoI’ve used lightdims for years. Great product to lesson the bright lights.
- mkj 3y agoSoldering a nicer coloured SMD LED over the top of the blue LED works well. Most colours have a lower voltage drop, so the blue doesn't glow at all. Worked well for my pocketbeagle board which was annoying me, my initial attempts a desoldering the blue one were unsuccessful (no hot air), but a nice amber one in parallel worked great.
- johnwalkr 3y agoFor desoldering without hot air, "chip quik" products are excellent. They make low melting point solder (like 60C). Add some to each pad of the led, and they will stay liquid long enough to remove the led with tweezers.
- groestl 3y agoHad an USB charger once that would shine through one layer of black electrical tape. Crazy.
- encom 3y agoI bought a USB charger to plug into my cars cigarette lighter plug. It lit up the whole cabin with blue light at night. This blue cancer has existed since blue LEDs were invented and immediately became a chinesium electronics favourite. Very tiresome.
- Fluorescence 3y agoThe light on the end of a Dell laptop power adaptor is like that. I tried multiple layers of electrical tape, colouring it in with a sharpie and even painting over it and nope, that bastard light cannot be dimmed. My main complaint is when using the laptop in dark bed to read ebooks and it is utterly blinding. I end up folding a bit of duvet over the bloody thing.
- SanjayMehta 3y agoHad this problem with an air conditioner whose one blue LED was bright enough to keep me awake. Two layers of yellow tape changed the colour and dimmed it enough to make it imperceptible.
- Gare 3y agoHuh, all the ACs I've used so far did have a switch on the remote to turn off all the lights.
- SanjayMehta 3y agoNot on this old Panasonic. I think it was meant only for offices.
- imp0cat 3y agoConsider yourself lucky.
- atticora 3y agoI recently bought an adjustable bed base which has USB ports on both sides. Each port has a bright blue light that illuminates the whole bedroom at night. I don't use them so covered both with black electrical tape. Problem solved. I've had the same problem with several desk lamps that lit up the world with that blue light even when turned off. I returned a couple of those immediately. But I looked through the reviews for all of the above and the issue wasn't even mentioned. I thought I was one of the few weirdos that care. It's nice to read here that I'm not alone in this. But we have to complain enough to make the manufacturers care.
- saargrin 3y agoive done this for all the phone chargers in the house
- mcv 3y agoPlease do add your own review. It's bizarre that manufacturers think unnecessary lights, and especially bright blue ones, are a good idea. Manufacturers have fallen a bit too much in love with blue leds. I've got to admit, the desktop cases I got from Fractal Design also use bright blue leds. I didn't think about it until I had guests sleep in that room.
- hollerith 3y agoYou are definitely not the only one.
- bdavbdav 3y agoI often wonder that when I use certain products. “How can this obviously terrible design choice not be reflected in reviews?”
- dqv 3y agoI think it comes up in at least some product reviews, but where it's glaringly obvious, it doesn't show up in the reviews because people purposely look for products that aren't like that. Buying a TV for my bedroom, one aspect of the search would include looking in the manual and seeing if has a suppressible standby light or checking for a non-aggressive standby light color. An unrelated example is that, at Target stores in the US, there are these (paper) notebooks/journals/diaries that have writing on the front that label them as such. The designs are really nice, but the labels make it ugly - as many people who chose not to buy the product will say "why do I need it to say journal on the front? I know it's a journal" and "I don't want to use it as a journal... I want to use it as a cookbook!" In this way, the reviews self-select only for people who don't care about the labels. They should really have antireviews where people can write why they didn't buy the product. It would give sellers some kind of signal that there's an issue with their product or its documentation causing people to avoid it.
- elf25 3y ago[dead]
- AdrianB1 3y ago2 problems here: color and intensity. 1. Color. Blue is more rare in nature than other colors and it has a known association with daylight that is disturbing for sleep. Why not something more neutral like orange (not red, not green)? 2. Intensity. I think the manufacturers don't even think about this. For indoor use, full brightness makes no sese, but bad UX is the default choice for most, what TV manufacturer pays attention at their user experience with the standby led? I guess they never think about it.
- jjav 3y ago> Blue is more rare in nature than other colors Since the sky and the ocean are blue, that suggests a majority of visual field in nature contains blue in most cases.
- AdrianB1 3y agoDaylight sky, with emphasis on daylight, and ocean blue only for people living next to a large body of water. Objects in nature are rarely blue. At night, nothing is blue, most of our history the only color at night is the orange-reddish of the camp fire (and yes, 100 years of light bulbs don't replace 50,000 years of conditioning of camp fires).
- wkat4242 3y agoYes but not the deep intense blue from most standby LEDs.
- thejohnconway 3y agoSame could be said of green or red though. I think it’s time to stop repeating this just-so story.
- wkat4242 3y agoHmm no but the intense deep blue is not good for the eyes and can even damage the retina at intensity. Green or red don't have this issue. It also has a noticeably different refractory index which is why red directly beside blue looks 'off'.
- Findecanor 3y agoI can not stand blue LEDs either. I have replaced them with white LEDs when they haven't been surface-mounted. I also have my computer equipment connected via an outlet with a power switch so I can turn things off completely. Yellow vinyl "headlight film" seems to have worked to make the blue LEDs on Unicomp Model M green.[1] I didn't think that would have worked, and I don't expect all film to be created equal with regards to which wavelengths they let through. [1]: https://deskthority.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=26454 https://deskthority.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=26454
- user3939382 3y agoThey sell packs of various size stickers specifically for blocking these lights on Amazon. They’re very cheap and work perfectly.
- INTPenis 3y agoI got a Thermaltake Core Chassis back in 2019 and its blue LED was so strong that the first time I took a nap on the couch in that room I was awaken by it in my eye like a police flashlight. It was super annoying, and unexpected. I put some tape over it, fixed forever.
- barnabee 3y agoHotel rooms are the worst for unwanted LEDs! I now carry blackout tape when I travel.
- globular-toast 3y agoYes. I've had to place objects in front of LEDs that can't be disabled before. But there are smoke/heat detectors that apparently need to blink all night and I wouldn't want to go taping those up. I now wear an eye mask. My favourite discovery, though, was in Spain. I started to notice all the hotels were wired up with a separate consumer unit per room. Me being me, I looked inside one and noticed someone had simply flipped the switch on the emergency exit sign to disable the green glow all night. Genius! Unfortunately not all hotels have individual consumer units nor do they put the exit sign on its own circuit.
- Podgajski 3y agoAnd I’m wondering how much power is wasted by the literally billions of these status indicating LEDs…
- kjkjadksj 3y agoI wonder if all the gains from phasing out incandescents have already been eaten alive from the probably 10000 leds that appear in the wake of every dying bulb? There’s an LED billboard (the reef) in downtown LA you can plainly see from Mt. Wilson 40 miles away. Throwing a stadiums worth of light all night like that to show junk no one wants to see. And they keep building more of these wastes of resources.
- morsch 3y agoHere's a related term: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox I think my household lighting is still more efficient than the incandescents we had when I was growing up. But there sure is more of it, in terms of fixtures as well as light output.
- chedabob 3y agoYeah the energy consumption of even the small advertising displays is insane. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/09/electronic-advertising-boards-manchester-energy-use-consumption https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/09/electronic-a...
- vidarh 3y agoI just bought sheets of small stickers.
- Groxx 3y agoNail polish works just about everywhere too, lasts for years (unlike electrical tape, which is excellent temporarily), and is trivial to find. It can take a couple layers, but if you just want to dim it that can be a good thing. (edit: though I have no idea if it'll let infrared through like this post covers. I luckily haven't had any devices sharing IR windows like that)
- fantasybroker 3y agoThat's a great tip! I bought an air purifier that has a very bright blue light illuminating the entire room at night. Now if only I can find a way to disable its annoying on/off chimes.
- e40 3y agoNYT Wirecutter top recommend one? Your description fits it to a T.
- Groxx 3y agoI've gotta find a way to stop the touch-sensitive controls on mine from responding to cats o_o. Because of course they're just on the flat top, where cats like to climb and stand.
- fantasybroker 3y agoA raised plexiglass shelf/cover, perhaps?
- jstarfish 3y agoIf you have the one I do (GE portable from Lowe's), just put a traffic cone on it. Ugly but works. I've tried the upside-down rolling chair mats and even DIYed a barbed-wire mesh from chickenwire; nothing deters them. It's a soothing place for them to sleep atop when running. Condensation forms under textbooks and other flat planks, which will eventually short the controls as water pools on top. The only other thing that "worked" was having the exhaust from a 1U rack server pointed at it. The heat initially attracted them but when those fans kicked on, cat met ceiling.
- orenlindsey 3y agoYou can't rely on colors to indicate status because someone might be colorblind. That's an often overlooked problem. You have to make the light do something special, like blink, if you really need it to indicate something important.
- porkbeer 3y agoSeems like optimizing for edge cases might not be the most practical.
- retrac 3y agoAbout 5% of men have some kind of colourblindness. It is common enough I would argue it's good engineering and design to avoid using colour to indicate anything important, particularly when avoidable. Red-green rather than light-dark for intensity maps are particularly infamous. Any time I see one of those posted on a forum and it gets traction, some poor commenter complains at the colour choice because they can't see red-green distinctions. Saw such on HN just the other day.
- jahewson 3y agoYou can use colors, just not ones that look the same to colorblind people. The Sim Daltonism app is great at helping with this.
- Scrapemist 3y agoJust yesterday I opened a USB charging station to rip out the LED's. Don't want to mess around with tape. I also remove big obnoxious logos with toothpaste.
- cantSpellSober 3y agoEver read Pattern Recognition by William Gibson? The main character has an allergy to logos, removes them from everything they can. Thanks for the toothpaste tip.
- neilv 3y agoI haven't had the IR remote complication like the article, but for too-bright-LED purposes, I use different colors of labelmaker tape (Brother TZe type) for different cases: * need blocking entirely (like on my LaserJet, and a UPS) -- black tape * too bright, but still need to see, and to differentiate colors (like on one of my living room servers) -- white tape, cut to size with hole punch * too bright for when i use it in dim lighting, and trying to avoid blue light then (like the ThinkLight on my ThinkPad T520) -- orange or red tape Some of this tape, I would move to behind the bezels, if I had the device open for service. Black tape also good for covering up cameras on laptops. If I sometimes use that camera, I make it a strip with a folded-over pull tab, and when I temporarily remove it, I stick it poking up from the top of the bezel as a reminder that the tape is off. For "hole punch" Pixel cameras in the screen, a hole-punched bit of labelmaker tape works, but IME falls off every few/several months. Secondary purpose: when I have multiple phones, different colors of labelmaker tape color-codes their identities on the screen, to help avoid accidents. (Color-coded cases would be better, but the case series I prefer only comes in black.)
- LeftHandPath 3y agoThat sounds a lot more livable than my solution of throwing pajama pants or socks over every LED before I go to bed. My dell laptop power connector and google router are the worst offenders.
- voltaireodactyl 3y agoFWIW I bought a set of like 200 small dot stickers of diff colors, barely opaque. They’re perfect. You can stick em on and use the color system you described. Like what teachers use for small crafts and such.
- neilv 3y agoThat works. I use labelmaker tape because I love labelmakers, and already have various colors of tape anyway. (White for most, black for more discrete labeling on black electronics, colors for color-coding things like employer-owned WFH equipment, and for rare warning labels for certain IT purposes.)
- bluescrn 3y agoBlack electrical tape was my solution for a Dell PSU for an Alienware laptop, with a particularly obnoxious bright blue LED on the power plug, it would practically illuminate a room while the machine was powered off and just charging.
- twic 3y agoI remember years ago i was over at a friend's place and ended up crashing on the sofa in his living room overnight. Right in front of his panoply of media and entertainment devices. When the room lights were off it was like being in a planetarium.
- gumby 3y ago> A free fix and you get to eat the chocolate. What could be better? We frame it the other way around in our lab: “The IR shield was purchased from Amazon [footnote: item XYZ, which was delivered with a free spectrometer]”
- lazyeye 3y agoYou can buy led light blocking stickers on amazon https://www.amazon.com/s?k=led+light+blocking+stickers https://www.amazon.com/s?k=led+light+blocking+stickers
- pnathan 3y agoI will just dab some orange or red acrylic paint on and call it good. No IR needs though. A little hax but it works Adequately.
- nyanpasu64 3y agoI use 1-3 layers of Kapton tape to dim blue LEDs. Interestingly it turns the painfully monochromatic blue light into a more pleasant teal color with two or more layers, probably by blocking out the blue peak more than the longer wavelengths.
- ewams 3y agoBought a Hisense tv for two reasons: status light turns OFF when the TV is on, and there is a physical disable switch for the microphone. Verified both in reviews and in person before buying. Electrical tape for everything else.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jnsaff2 3y agoKapton tape.
- JoshTriplett 3y agoI really appreciate that on my ThinkPad, I can turn off most of the LEDs: the power LED, and the LED on the back that dots the 'i' in ThinkPad. However, annoyingly, there doesn't seem to be any way to turn off the bright charging LED that's present when the device is charging.
- anonu 3y agoI've fixed this problem on 2 devices by snipping the LED off the circuit board. Of course it might brick the device but in some cases its worth the risk.
- zh3 3y agoPSA: black acrylic is opaque to visible light, but transparent to IR - so a bit of that will nix the light but not the IR. It's actually pretty interesting to look at the world with an IR camera (e.g. Pi NoIR) - red wine looks like clear water, black actrylic looks plate glass, black t-shirts appear pale.
- powersnail 3y agoEdit: didn't read the article carefully enough.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- masto 3y ago[flagged]
- kelahcim 3y agoIt looks like there is this secret society working hard on making people suffer in a hotel rooms after long trips. Blue TV indicators, white and blue air condition panels, impossible to cover LEDs that are attached to fire detectors. All of that to make sure the room stays as bright as possible the whole night. I am always impressed with the efficiency of these little, bright, things. In terms of a brightness per cubic meter efficiency.
- cantSpellSober 3y agoI've started travelling with a roll of black tape because the problem you describe is so bad
- midasuni 3y agoFirst thing I do is unplug the tv. Been woken too many times by TVs turning themselves on during the night.
- emmelaich 3y agoA new phenomenon is for people to mark their driveway entrances with little blue LEDs. (At least here in Sydney). It is very annoying. If they spread in popularity there definitely will be a backlash.
- efitz 3y agoIt would be interesting to have consumer standards (perhaps even regulatory standards) about the brightness and color of LED indicator lights on devices. Someone beat me to the “dimmer sticker” idea several years ago [1], there’s clearly a problem here. I’m a huge smart home enthusiast and have played with many devices and the only ones I’ve ever thought got dimness correct on indicator lights is Lutron. [1] https://a.co/d/h9QbBRL https://a.co/d/h9QbBRL
- chiph 3y agoMy bedroom clock radio had a backlight that was super bright (and super annoying). I stopped by a local car tinting shop and asked them for a piece of 5% limo tint that they might have had leftover from a job. It took two layers to dim the display to get it tolerable.
- narag 3y agoThat's nothing: https://jalopnik.com/mercedes-turquoise-automated-driving-lights-level-3-1851110043 https://jalopnik.com/mercedes-turquoise-automated-driving-li... Get ready for the future :)
- Razengan 3y agoOne of the best things Apple did that no one talk about but everyone definitely appreciates is the almost complete removal of status lights from their devices.
- userbinator 3y agoUnfortunately makes it harder to know that they're doing anything. A subtle glow is the best for an indicator light.
- amluto 3y agoOne can often open the cases of electronics to expose the PCB and then use a razor blade to cut the offending traces. This gives an excellent cosmetic result (no tape!), and most electronics don’t mind their LEDs becoming open circuits. And IR receivers are entirely unaffected as long as you cut the right traces.
- juancn 3y agoI had that problem and used an old remote's visible light filter and some glue to block the led light of the TV in my bedroom.
- Rebelgecko 3y agoA suggestion I saw here on HN was to use red lithographers tape. It's great,the LED's status is still visible but it doesn't blare and bounce off the ceiling.
- kazinator 3y agoI've put electrical tape over those things, like other commenters. In one or two cases, I put a tiny pinhole into the electrical tape right over the LED, in order to still see the light, but at a severely reduced brightness.
- silveira 3y agoThese become a real problem when my first son was born. I got some stickers on Amazon done specifically for this and it was just perfect.
- cratermoon 3y agoBlue is the worst color for a bedroom. Physiologically it's the most "alert" light, like a blue sky. It ruins night vision, too.
- AnotherGoodName 3y agoThe early Intel based Macbooks lit up the whole room with an extremely bright standby led. It's one of those cases where a dictator style CEO is needed. The dictator experienced this and issued a reasonable directive to never allow standby leds on any of the company products ever again. If it's on standby it's dark. And that rule has now stuck. A good example in how different management styles can lead to products with fewer or more annoyances. Some CEOs would shrug off a product going out that could never operate in a typical house due to bright always on LEDs. Others would call it out, go down the chain as needed to make sure that mistake never happens again.
- callalex 3y agoI know this advice is like 10 years too late, but if you leave the lid open on a MacBook in a dark room it will be able to use the light sensor that controls the screen/keyboard brightness to also dim the power indicator light.
- hnaccount_rng 3y agoThis amount of overengineering is what brings me coming back to Apple. Though I don’t even use the MacSafe charger anymore
- edgartaor 3y agoTechnology Connections rants about this too. I agree. https://youtu.be/oHeehYYgl28?t=823 https://youtu.be/oHeehYYgl28?t=823
- tastysandwich 3y agoI bought a roll of red brake-light tape off Amazon when my daughter was born. Covered every little light in the house. Highly recommended!
- magospietato 3y agoA point I didn't notice in the comments is that Nestlé have replaced the previous biodegradable cellophane and foil wrappers with biodegradable paper, so this hack is no longer valid.
- jacobsenscott 3y agoCertainly every product designer knows how annoying these things are. Who are the pointy haired bosses forcing them add these leds?
- wlesieutre 3y agoI’ve previously seen 3M 616 ruby red lithographer's tape recommended for this on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33278895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33278895
- nfriedly 3y agoI had a similar problem with the power/standby LED on my living room PC, but I fixed it with a resistor to cut the brightness and some capacitors to make it fade out instead of just blinking on and off. I wrote a bit about it in the "Power/Standby LED" section on https://pcpartpicker.com/b/LYjypg https://pcpartpicker.com/b/LYjypg
- stevage 3y agoI'm pretty sensitive to petty annoyances, but for some reason this doesn't bother me. Having a couple of random LEDs around the house helps with walking around very late at night. And in bed I wear an eyemask, so...
- woutersf 3y agoOnly mildly related but just as annoying; old cars would have a dimmer button to reduce the backlight in the dashboard. With all the screens in midern cars, even the minimum brightness is too bright for me driving in the night.it wont let your eyes adapt to the dark. My last Hyundai had a moon button to turn off screen but that was an exception ithink. I have driven hours with a cloth over the screen of my skoda octavia in the night. Please let me turn off the screen for dark night driving, thank you.
- TylerE 3y agoHardly an old thing. My 2017 model supports that just fine, and it's not just a button but a circular slider that goes all the way down to the dash lights being practically off.
- demondemidi 3y agoI had a 97 Saab 900 turbo with an “airplane mode” button that turned off all the dash lights except for the speedometer. It was actually pretty damn useful.
- ISL 3y agoThat night-mode option in Saabs is pretty incredible. It simplifies the driving experience to an impressive degree.
- userbinator 3y agoI wonder if that might be the result of ((mis-)interpreting) some regulation that mandates the instruments must always be visible.
- BenFranklin100 3y agoWhat I want is a phosphorus tape that stoke shifts the blue LED light into a dimmer, longer wavelength green or red light. When we replaced our older oven that had a pleasant, dim, yellowish indicator light, we ended up with a new oven that has murderously bright blue LED that casts a ghoulish glow across the kitchen for those 3AM refrigerator raids. The new coffee maker is just as bad. Sometimes ‘progress’ moves backwards.
- whalesalad 3y agoI use felt, tesa or fitness tape. It’s almost like adhesive cloth, so it has small holes in it that leak light but block most light almost like polarized lenses. Put it on all kinds of devices and it numbs the bright LED lighting substantially.