Everything has LEDs now and they drive me nuts
Why does every small appliance or useful home electronics item have the BRIGHTEST LEDs in them?
I bought a new fan for our bedroom Sunday. It has 4 speed settings, and LEDs to display which setting you're on.
Just like every other electrical device in our bedroom, I had to cover the LEDs with electrical tape because they are TOO DAMM BRIGHT. That one light was more than bright enough for me to see in the room with all the lights off.
I can't sleep well if there's a lot of light like that, especially blue light, and it's like every fucking electronics manufacturer used the same extra bright blue LEDs.
All of our power strips have them. Same brightness.
The fans have them.
Don't even get me started on digital clocks and the plague of bright LEDs that they bring about
Many charging plugs have them built into the plug itself.
Even some fucking light switches have them now!
I have about 6 different things in our bedroom that have electrical tape over their completely unnecessary LEDs.
Why has this become such a common thing? Is this really something most people want? To have a room that is never actually dark even with the lights turned off?
Electrical tape to black it out.
Painters tape to dim it.
The electrical tape approach is what I did and it did wonders. Went from having a myriad of green and blue LEDs on my fans/portable AC/etc to complete wonderful darkness when I retired for the night. Made a distinct difference in my ability to fall asleep faster at night. I hate having lights when going to bed. Darkness or bust.
You can actually buy tinted tape to dim them without completely blacking them out. So you can take your clock from “bright enough to keep your entire bedroom lit” to “just bright enough to read in the dark.”
Found out while watching Technology Connections. Bright blue monochromatic LEDs are one of his biggest pet peeves, and he mentioned the tinted tape off-hand in one of his videos.
https://youtu.be/oHeehYYgl28?t=13m45s
Bingo, there it is. Thanks!
I bought some pre-cut led dimming stickers on a sheet. Any new electronics that come into my house get one. As someone who likes to sleep in near complete darkness it's a must have.
Do this and never look back
May the LED's I tape not light the way
I literally travel with a roll of black electric tape for this exact reason.
No officer, I use it to cover the lights on electronics in my hotel room. Honest!
I mean, just carry a small roll of it, not one that's like an inch or two wide...
Didn't think about the painters tape for just dimming the light, great idea.
I have a black pen that can write on plastic. I've used that to dim the insanely bright LED on a smoke detector. If you are careful (I wasn't) then this method looks nicer than putting some tape on a device.
Use cut pieces of sticky notes. It's the correct width and doesnt look as jank
I use tiny balls of patafix/blutac to cover exactly the LED surface.
I get to be that guy! I'm so excited!
In power strips, the lights are (in the overwhelming majority of cases) actually a neon bulb! They're cheaper for that specific purpose because they can be powered directly off of the mains power with a single resistor.
Your point is entirely valid and I bear the same cross, this is just a fun fact you can use to impress colleagues, strangers, and potential lovers, dazzling them with your deep esoteric knowledge of and passion for illuminators in power strips.
Hah, this is what I liked the most about reddit - learning random bits of knowledge about things I knew nothing about. I'm glad to see this happen here too!
What's a reddit?
It was a website from the old times of the internet, where people behind pseudonyms could freely discuss links and texts inside thematic communities.
sounds weird
Hell yes me too. And it was the top comment.
Car headlight are too fucking bright nowadays
People driving around like they're trying to spot kangaroos in the suburbs
Especially when they're in one of those God-ugly American Pickup Trucks with headlights that are right at eye level for anyone in a normal car. Even being followed by a forty year old Mack semi isn't nearly as bad, because they've at least got sealed beam headlights.
"... one of those God-ugly American Pickup Trucks ..."
Why'd you say American Pickup Trucks twice?
I kid, but really those things are hideous. The front end looks like a Baleen whale feeding.
Agreed. I can't tell when people are driving with their high beams on anymore.
My pet peeve is not just the brightness, but the blueness. These things are fucking blue raspberry slurpee blue. Paired with a very reddish orange turn signal they come up behind me and indicate and I think I'm getting pulled over for a sec.
This is why I always have the high beans on when driving my 90's car. I've got to fit in with the cool kids (oh and be able to see the road despite the blinding lights coming at me.)
Not sure if you are joking or not. But at times that's actually what I think about and sometimes even do. If there is a car with too bright lights coming down the road I'll turn on the high beams because it reduces my ability to see the road otherwise.
Electrical tape can be used to black them out.
Might be some solace in the near future. Pixel Light is becoming a thing, where the car will selectively black out part of the headlight beam for oncoming traffic.
Because they’re cheap and look “modern/futuristic” so shit manufacturers love them. I have also used electrical tape on power strips, chargers, smoke detectors, etc
That and your average electrical engineer will consider an LED useful that signals the device has power.
Most probably then don't consider where the device is actually used. In a well-lit office space that LED doesn't annoy anyone.
Agree. When my DVD player back in 2000 came with a bright blue power-on LED, that crap started to bother me. Sitting right under the TV, so watching anything in a darkened room means I had that fucker blinding me all the time. Nothing a little duct tape can't fix, but that's not exactly helping.
Ever since I've been actively avoiding devices where I can't dim & disable the LEDs.
I have a similar complaint about almost all "gamer gear" having RGB lighting. Why would I want that? I'm not even opposed to the "gamer" aesthetic of a lot of sharp lines and strong colors, I think that can look really good, but when my mousepad has RGB it's time to blow the whistle and stop all manufacturing until we can figure out what's going on.
Buying RAM recently and people are reviewing the fucking RGB instead of the performance. Like, WTF are you doing with your life? I managed to find some without gratuitous lighting effects thankfully.
I've never liked the RGB thing. Sometimes it can look good (when they're all set to one color that matches the rest of the build), but 99% of them look tacky. Whenever I get around to building a PC finally, I'm gonna try to have zero LEDs in there. Just something nice and simple and clean.
Right? Sure, keyboards with backlit keys are nice, and why not have them colorful? But pls don't try to sell me RGB RAM
Here's some insightful view into the topic of gamer aesthetics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgOI4908QyY
The video is in German, but you can toggle the subtitles into (auto-generated) English.
My hunch is it's to stand out in influencer videos for a shot at viral marketing.
That's why I feel old. I don't want case windows, or RGB. It's all about the framerate and the score.
Yeah, my PC case came with a bunch of rgb fans. Hate them, but I didn't want to buy more fans just to get rid of the rgb.
I design electronics sometimes. Generally, people want an indicator light on their product, since it's a cheap way to show the state of a system.
The main problem is, the human eye adapts to darkness. You can still clearly see an LED in a dark room when a few microamperes pass through them, but then they are useless in brighter light in that case. There's no specific amount of current that produces light that's bright enough in a lit room, but isn't too bright in a dark room.
I can fix that by occasionally turning off the LED and measuring voltage across it (LEDs detect light in addition to emitting it), then dimming it if I'm in a dark room. However, this is quite complicated to do and requires a capable microcontroller and a pretty ninja embedded systems programmer. Most product developers I know won't think of specifically doing this.
Finally, I can save 0.1 cents (plus board space plus assembly complexity, which cost more) by connecting an LED directly to the pins of a microcontroller instead of using a resistor to limit current. Some microcontrollers specifically allow this, up to 10 or 20 milliamperes, which is enough to be too bright in some contexts already. Margins on hardware manufacture are extremely thin, so optimizing even 1 cent off a board is pretty important.
All of this together leads to a lot of LED proliferation, which I' don't like either. The stuff I build for myself often has a way to control the LED brightness, although this would be too expensive to add to a consumer product as a general rule. For small devices, there's a tilt switch inside that turns off the indicator LEDs if you turn it upside down and hold it for a few seconds. That way you can just reach over at night and fix it without fiddling for switches or controls.
I love lemmy for bringing back the old informative internet like this comment.
Thank you for this informed input :-)
There's a whole amazing secret world where our devices come from! I'm glad just to have a little window in on it.
A photoresistor would be handy for adjusting indicator led brightness.
Sure -- and that's an easy way to do it. However if I'm going to make it automatic, I like the elegance of using an LED as it's own sensor for how bright it should be. It also uses up fewer microcontroller pins -- for example, I can use pulse width modulation to give the LED a default brightness. Then during the OFF part of the cycle, reconfigure the pin to act as an ADC and make a measurement of the ambient light and adjust the duty cycle as needed.
It's the kind of optimization I enjoy! Another neat trick is using the watchdog timer and counting CPU cycles to allow really low duty cycles for lights you want to keep very dim, without using a resistor to limit current (you are instead using the IV curve on the datasheet and a little math). I use this plus magnets and coin cells to make little lights I can stick to things to avoid hitting my head on them, usually doorframes (I'm very tall and live in Southeast Asia). They run for 3+ years off the cell, and have configurable brightness!
I miss the days of red LEDs. I understand blue were new and novel at one point but that's passed.
new AND novel?
also fresh and different!
Our fresh state of the art new innovation, neoBlue© coloured LEDs, using novaBright technology(patent pending) to brighten your days and lead to a fresh and exciting future filled with the latest stunning luxuries.
I'm old.enough to remember when this was literally a news item... For a long time LEDs where red orange and green but the wavelength for blue was tricky. Then in early 90s they finally cracked being able to make blue with cheap materials and manufacturing processes for mass consumption. It would change the world as having r g and b enabled LEDs to be used in displays. So blue LEDs were the ones that won a Nobel prize and was in all the journals and on pop sci TV shows like beyond 2000.
So some of the copy was identical to your post
(Read more here https://medium.com/predict/why-blue-led-earned-nobel-prize-if-reds-and-greens-already-existed-for-decades-d03e31a6fd8f )
It’s different to the eye! See how it’s something you might recognize, but you don’t?
I don’t know if this is the right place to complain about this but since it’s LED related.. Why are all the automakers putting the brightest fucking LED’s in their new vehicles now?? They are legit brighter then how high beams used to be only a few years back!!
What did we all used to do when headlights used to be slightly yellow??
Yeah, there used to be regulations on this stuff, because you kind of just end up in an arms race.
Pretty much the only reason you'd want brighter headlights, is so that if someone blinds you with their bright headlights, you still see things behind that.
We're also in a big vehicles arms race. I'm always telling people about how big vehicles cause more kids to get run over, more pedestrians to die, more damage in accidents, etc. The most common response from giant vehicle owners is that it makes them feel safer in an accident.
In 10 years they'll probably all be driving tanks with stadium lights mounted on top.
Modern SUVs are about the size of a Sherman tank from WWII.
Electrical engineer here who also does hobby projects. I'm with you. I think some of the reason may be that modern GaN-type green or blue LEDs are absurdly efficient, so only a couple mA of drive current is enough to make them insanely bright.
When I build LEDs into my projects, for a simple indicator light, I might run them at maybe only a tenth of a milliamp and still get ample brightness to tell whether it is on or not in a lit room. Giving them the full rated 10 or 20mA would be blindingly bright. I also usually design most things with a hard on/off switch so they can be turned all the way off when not in use.
Of things I own normally I also have two power strips with absurdly bright LEDs to indicate the surge protection. It lights up my whole living room with the lights off. If I had to have something like that in my bedroom, I would probably open it up and disconnect the LEDs in some way, or maybe modify the resistor values to run at the lowest current I could get away with.
I feel like designers have lost sight of the fact that these lights are meant to be indicators only-- i.e. a subtle indication of the status of something and not trying to light a room-- and yet they default to driving them at full blast as if they were the super dim older-gen LEDs from 20+ years ago.
I think it's a cost thing. It's cheaper to get these blue LEDs than the old, dimmer green ones, so they buy these instead and change nothing else. It would cost money to change the resistor value, so they don't bother. Instead they take the same boad, stick the new LED on it, and ship it that way.
I could see that being the case for some things, at least in cases where it is an older design being updated or VE'd. Perhaps some sourcing person changes the LED part number on the AVL and forgets to check with engineering whether the resistor value which goes with it is a sane level of brightness still.
Next level pro-tip: Use a "dot" or dab of dark nail polish to tone down the intensity. It's more permanent than the tape method but will allow you to see if the LED is on or off so doesn't remove functionality.
Black electrical tape is usually pretty long-lasting in my book, but nail polish sounds like a good idea too given that it dries pretty quickly
I have opened up devices to physically remove the led. SMD LEDs stand no chance against a steady hand and a precision flathead screwdriver.
Ah yes. Just like my precision printer adjustment mallet.
I have a lamp and that has an LED that is on all the time.
Why would a lamp have a permanently on LED? That's what I get for getting cheap crap from China, rather than premium crap from China.
I prefer midrange crap from China
I don't seem to find it mentioned: LEDs at night are terrible for your sleep, especially the blue ones. Among other things they suppress the melatonin release.
An article that goes into more detail and provides a citations for further research.
Yep, its part of why this drives me crazy. I notice a big difference in my sleep when I'm in, say, a hotel that has any of these LEDs in it.
It's hard to find a PC case that doesn't look like a disco.
You actually have to pay a premium to avoid lightshow pc hardware nowadays. If i had to guess, someone over at marketing for these companies figured out that people who want blacked out hardware skew older or professional and are willing to pay.
Pretty much. I was actually purchasing a computer build and it was cheaper to give the build a cohesive RGB look. The main thing jacking the price up was the RAM. The RGB RAM was cheaper to get than the non-RGB one.
I don't think RGB would be that bad as an aesthetic choice if all the companies actually stuck to one standard like how we have SATA, USB, etc., but they don't. Most of my RGB components are from Corsair so it's not a huge problem as iCUE can control it, but if you've got different vendors and/or you use Linux, it's trickier. This is what OpenRGB is trying to solve, and what Level1Tech and Gamer's Nexus are trying to sort out with OpenPleb.
Or how every appliance needs to have an alarming beeeeeeep to alert you its done. Like its cool that you finished sterilizing our babies bottles but it wasn't really urgent...
Like the coffee grinder which beeps to let you know that the [rather loud] grinding process has finished!
My oven sounds exactly like my fire alarm, it's distressing, the first time I used it I ended up running to the kitchen thinking I was going to find the place burning.
At least my washing machine plays a cute little tune.
Is it an LG?
♫
I'm done with the laundry
dirty and stinky old laundry
I'm done with the laundry
what do you want from me now?
♫
At leat that has a real function. It's annoying, but it's a planned annoyance, and sometimes it really is useful so it's tolerable.
But so many of these LEDs indicate nothing except "this has power," which is readily apparent 99% of the time because it's plugged in and the house has power.
My favorite implementation of this is on a GPU power plug for a PC. The PSU will supply the power the GPU needs, but it has about 75w of "dirty" power from being plugged in to the motherboard, which it is plugged into for data. One company has LEDs only come on when the GPU power plug isn't plugged in. This way, if it comes uncoupled ever so slightly during a move, the warning LEDs by the plug come on. But otherwise they are off. Easy to diagnose, and when the LEDs turn off, you know it's plugged in.
I moved into a place with a weird dishwasher with an earsplitting beep when it's done. Never had one of these like this before. It chimes every 10 minutes for about 30 minutes. It's really annoying when you forget about the sound. I used to run my dishwasher when I went to bed. Not anymore. :(
My egg cooker competes with my smoke detector on how loud it is
On the other hand, I prefer the beeps over the jingles every appliance has now.
I laugh at those annoying jingles. Our washing machine sounds so pleased with itself when it has finished a load, playing a bright, happy, celebratory song. Pay attention to me! I have completed my assigned task!
One day they are going to be beeping at us like R2D2 providing way too much information.
"Beepity beep beep warble beep boop!" Translation - Dude use tissues, those socks were disgusting.
I bought an LG TV for my bedroom. Its WHITE LED is FUCKING BLINKING WHEN OFF. I taped it with black tape, but then it's so bright that's leaking from the button spacing. I had to buy a smart relay like a shelly pm and write a simple program like "after 11pm if power usage is under 2W, cut the power to the appliance"
Check your tv settings, most of mine have an option to turn off the led.
it doesn't allow to turn off the LED (my other samsung instead has a setting "led on when it's on, led off when it's off", but by default it was the opposite, "led off when on, led on when off")
it has an ECO mode that I can enable. It's so funny, when you turn off the TV, then it shows a grey rectangle at max brightness "ECO MODE ACTIVATED"
Sometimes there's a hidden menu. It's usually called hotel mode and/or service mode. It's usually easily findable on Google. That mode is also great to e.g. limit the max volume. There could be multiple modes btw. Maybe the LED setting is part of those modes?
Y'all need some Light Dims (yes, that website didn't enter the 21st century, but their product is luckily solid).
Just search led light dim stickers on Amazon and you'll find them for way less. They're just stickers. You could also find round stickers in an office supply or art store.
I know your rage.
I ended up buying LED dimming stickers off Amazon and went hog wild on all the devices in the house.
There's specialty stickers? What do they do that tape can't?
I also bought dimming stickers. I can't tell you why everyone uses them, of course, but I bought stickers rather than using tape for a couple of reasons. The main one is that there are some lights that indicate information I still want to get. Our fan has LEDs to indicate current speed, my wireless phone charger has a light to indicate that it detects the phone. That information is good, and I want it! Just not as brightly as the manufacturer wants to give it to me, so I put stickers that dim about 75% and they're perfect. The other big reason, for me, is that I simply find the stickers more aesthetically pleasing. Even if I want to block the light fully, rather than just dim it, a little circular sticker looks nicer to me than a piece of tape.
I recently bought new USB-C cables to use on my nightstand and when they arrived I saw they have an LED ring with a flowing rainbow pattern. Are you kidding me? Just why.
I like having that LED on the end of the cable. I use it to charge my phone in the car and it saves me fumbling around trying to find the end of my cables when I want to charge my phone in the car while driving at night.
Yeah that makes total sense. It's my own fault for not noticing. I use them everywhere but my bedroom.
Thought this was going to be a more specific complaint about computer hardware/accessories. So much of the high end stuff is just littered with bullshit RGB lighting. Coolers, GPUs, keyboards, mice, monitors, case fans, even fucking RAM sticks! It's insane.
For general appliances my complaint wouldn't be the single LED on it but the brightness. Like you I cover up the bright ones with electrical tape. It wouldn't even cost them any extra money to make it lighter. Just requires a different resistor value.
For some fucking reason we went from a nice minimalistic design in pcs to all the colors of the rainbow and then some. Like, who cares what it looks like, what matters is the performance it gets...
At least most of that can be turned off in settings somewhere.
Bought a neat closed-loop watercooling cpu heatsink that has a whole dang programmable screen on it if I pay a monthly thing, or solid colors if I don't. defaults to cycling through the rainbow. But it has an off mode, so I'm A-OK with none of that.
The team that invented blue LEDs won a nobel prize.
Now every fucking item in my room has a beacon that would put the eye of fucking Sauron to shame.
100% agree with you, and have started destroying LEDs where possible.
I remember the transition from dull red LEDs to bright blue LEDs in the 90s/2000s, around the time that mass production of blue LEDs became affordable (due to the innovations that led to the nobel prize you mentioned). I wish they had all just stayed dull red or green.
I remember when those were considered cool at the time and i modded my PC case to replace the dull green LED with a bright blue one.
It lasted for only a few days before i added some tape in front of it (and it lasted so long because i was trying to convince myself it wasn't annoying) :-P
I can understand for things that don't look obviously on, but a fan? C'mon. If the fan starts spinning, I know it's working. I don't need a light telling me it's on.
Last night I learned the one I bought actually has two. It had one on the fan itself, and ONE IN THE FUCKING PLUG
WHO NEEDS AN LED IN A PLUG
I've taken too darkening them with a sharpie.
Ditto, but silver metallic sharpie. It gives a better, more opaque coating.
What drives me nuts is all of the light fixtures that have Integrated LED bulbs in them.
They make regular LED bulbs to put into fixtures, there's no reason for the stupid integrated LEDs. LED bulbs give you the option of choosing brightness and tone.
And sure, integrated bulbs may be rated to last 20 years, but the circuitry and drivers controlling those bulbs are not. You'll be lucky to get 5 years out of it, and then you have to toss the whole thing away and buy a new one and install it again.
This just happened to me. I had an "integrated" LED light in my laundry room that died after 4 years. I was flabbergasted that I had to buy a whole fixture.
Happened to me - two “integrated” LED fixtures (from different manufacturers) failed within 5-7 years from purchase. Instead of just switching a bulb, I had to replace the whole thing. Never again.
Don't even get me started on color temperature and lumens ratings on integrated LED fixtures. Nothing brings the rage out of me more than when I installed 6 new "led can lights" with an integrated LED. The color temperatures ranged from like 2300K to 3500K and lumens were all over the place too. Despite all of them being rated at 2700K and 600 lumens. Returned them all and had to buy a significantly more expensive set to make sure they were all color accurate.
The gradual spread of light pollution has gotten crazy, and people still don't really notice it. We're at the point that it's actually driving insects to extinction. If you look somewhere rural vs. urban the difference in what constitutes "night" is mindblowing, and rural areas are getting brighter all the time themselves.
I'm honestly a bit surprised that we don't have mandatory dimmers installed in all major buildings that turn off the lights after X hour or x number of hours without any movement.
That, and motion sensors and dimmers on street lights with shades on them to prevent light from being blasted into people's homes and apartments.
This much light pollution can't be healthy.
I really wish that street lights were required to be turned off after midnight on all but main roads. It would help with this.
So would banning fucking motion activated spotlights that activate after a certain time at night.
You’ve reminded to tape off the blinking blue LED on my monitor, it’s been driving me nuts when I’m trying to sleep!
I like the big bright ass light on my monitor when I am using it. Burning my retina from the corner of my eye. Good thing it’s there to tell me my monitor is on. Like I wouldn’t know my monitor is on because I am fucking looking at it…
Do it bro it makes a huge difference. Blinking ones are even worse to me.
If you have the means, try not to keep your computer in the same room you sleep
Why?
For one, the LEDs mess with your sleep. Some wavelength of light make your body think it's day therefore inhibiting melatonin production (the hormone that makes you sleepy).
Furhermore, a general advice for better sleep is to keep electronics outside if the bedroom, as they are too psychologically engaging (e.g. "I'll just check one more post on Lemmy").
I just sleep with a mask, but I hear you man, that trend is super-irritating. I think it comes from people who cant tell that something is powered on without seeing an led indicator
You mean can't tell something is powered on without a freaking bat-signal? That's how it feels at night.
If someone can't tell that a FAN is plugged in without TWO LEDs (one on the fan itself, another in the plug) then I'm sorry they shouldn't own the fan, they may actually hurt themselves with it.
It's a fan. When you plug it in it spins. If it isn't spinning, you either didn't plug it in, or didn't hit the power button on the fan.
From an electronic tech perspective... I've been replacing the LEDs in anything that annoys me with a dull red and a resistor valued to keep it barely visible. It's a tad more eloquent than tape. Most things don't need a led at all. I'd love to see manufacturers switch to an e paper solution with a simple "on" or "off" displayed. And I hate standby led's.
I can't imagine any device that needs a sign telling you whether is on or off.
When you look at your tv, can you tell if it's on? What about your car, your phone, your furnace, your microwave? If one needed a sign to tell them those things are on, it would be a miracle they could even use them at all.
A lot of small electronic devices without screens(which are quite common) probably need something. That said, an ultra-bright LED, especially blue, which seems to be the most annoying, is not the way to go.
I've been covering LEDs with tape the last 20 years, televisions and media players in particular. Who in their right mind decides to build a DVD player with a damn blue laser led in the front panel to blind your movie experience?
Smoke detectors that blink once every ten minutes to let you know that there is nothing going on, with a light that could be mistaken for an electrical fire. Open up, cover LED hole with tape, careful not to disrupt smoke sensing capabilities, close up. Now the LED is visible when looking for it.
Get yourself a cheap pack of various coloured electrical tapes. Tin foil when it's not enough.
Tin foil is not a recommended replacement for most applications of electrical tape. In case someone gets some bad ideas lol
I hate this trend.
I'm quite sensitive to light, and some of these LED's are stupid.
Thought I read somewhere it’s cheaper to get these super bright LEDs, so they use those rather than something easier on the eye.
LEDs are very cheap, very bright, take little energy, and have an extremely long life span. They're perfect, but designers keep bumping up the brightness.
That wouldn't surprise me, since that basically summarizes capitalism in a nutshell. Make decisions that make the consumers experience worse but make the product cheaper to make, therefore increasing profits.
It's more like having the LED on is cheap (you can control their brighness by reducing voltage or the more common way is to turning the LED on and off often enough Also the container and it's thickness affect the brightness (most LEDs are white with a different top)
https://youtu.be/c6NFuJMfmYU
My in-laws power outlets throughout the whole house have always on LEDs on them. It drives me crazy. My mother in law likes it and says they are like night lights, but the whole house is so bright at night.
I think we should also have a review on non-functional (decorative) LEDs on the gadgets we buy, especially those cheap chargers that decide to light up the whole room with blue.
Tbh I think we need laws about them to get this shit to stop.
It's objectively bad for people's health to be surrounded by bright light at night, because it impacts your ability to sleep.
All for regulation of products but I don't think LEDs are something that need to be regulated
Well they do, because of the reason that was just given.
I work in IT, LEDs are useful for diagnostics.
Why blue? No idea.
Who asked for this? Nobody, as far as I can tell.... They just switched, and didn't ask anyone for an opinion on it.
Why so bright? Because modern LEDs are generally pretty darn bright.... When these are used as an indicator instead of an actual light source, I'm scratching my head just as much as you are. I'm immune to the light problem when sleeping; I understand some have that problem, but it's not me. Generally I'm unbothered by device LEDs, but I'm not the majority. I'd rather go back to the old, barely visible LEDs used on 386 computers, they did the job and didn't burn a hole in your retina doing it.
Blue LEDs used to be super expensive. Therefore, only high end electronics had them. So once LEDs got dirt cheap, everybody started dropping blue LEDs on everything to capture that "premium" feel.
Now of course, it's just obnoxious
I used to work in electronics manufacturing. I won't give my title because it was a shit title and didn't describe what I did well at all. I think that was on purpose to keep our salaries low.
I engineered final assembly test systems. Like the product fully completed. Most of these devices were commercial in nature.
My man, the testers fucking LOVED LEDs. Because LEDs not turning on correctly always means the device fails.
I hated them, because was really fucking hard to automate testing of LEDs. LEDs emit a wavelength, or combination of RGB. Because of the brilliance of my sales engineers, we used computer vision to automate this testing, NOT sensors. The reasoning? Much denser LED placements.
But guess what happens when your supply chain and manufacutirng is entirely Chinese and your product is designed and prototyped and originally manufactured here? YOU GET THE WRONG FUCKING COLOR CALIBRATED. I'm not shitting you, it was a tiny difference in Red wavelength. Tiny. but computer vision doesn't read wave length, it reads color.
LEDs make testing easy for humans. If you just need to see them light up? Everything is great. Bonus points for brighter LEDs for faster moving tests. Faster moving tests = more profit. Human testers means you don't spend money on automated testing and and can quickly repurpose humans to see if an LED is on.
Did testers like blue LEDs more than red? Everything seems to be blue now but red are better for your eyes at night. Idgi.
Obviously you need that idle indicator light to give off more lumens than a 2D Maglite all night long right?
How else would I know the power strip was on? It's not like it's charging my phone and powering the fan, if it didn't light the room up I would obviously shove forks into the sockets because that's something I regularly do in my spare time
Fully agree. One of the worst offenders is the PS5 whose standby lights can’t even be covered with tape properly because they’re complex curves. Even the clocks on my stove and microwave are too bright. I happened to have some black “washi” tape (basically masking tape) and it did a nice job of dimming them without looking out of place.
There really should be an option to dim it low.
I regularly take nail polish and paint over these infernal LEDs in layers until they are at a brightness that I find acceptable. Red are not so bad, but blue LEDs area nightmare. I have a cheap Chinese headlamp were the blue battery indicator is brighter than the red led for illumination, and the blue reflects off my glasses into my eyes.
Sadly appliances with useful dimming options are getting very rare.
In the same boat as OP and other commenters: electrical tape and sharpies FTW
I had to put electrical tape on my monitors- when you're using multiple monitors in your setup, it's super inconvenient to have to switch each one on and off each morning/evening so it's better to just let them sleep, but when you do that they're just too dang bright.
hashtag-not-an-engineer-but The vast majority of products you can just pull the LED. Don't resolder, just pull it out. If it goes badly, you can either just put it back, or replace with a "non-LE-"diode of the same spec.
I have an old Samsung screen, which has a bright blue LED when it's working. So far, so good. If you turn off your PC, the same blue LED starts to blink. Looks like you get raided by the police. How can anybody think it is a good idea to have a blinking LED for a device that isn't used?
I have a similar screen. Can't you just turn it off?
I think I had a similar one.
You can turn it off, but then you have to turn it back on again when you turn on your PC. Would be nice if it just didn't keep blinking in the standby mode, which is what I mostly leave my screens on when they're not in use.
You can't tell anyone this, but I have a friend who is deep inside the insurance industry. Some of the big guys have invested heavy into LEDs. So to maximize the LED investments, they give manufacturers safety discounts for every LED they can attach to their shit. Big guys make some extra zeros for their accounts, and sharpie and 3M get some splash, too.
My friend, you just told the entire internet.
Those bright LED interfaces are called "Abusive Appliance Interfaces" by Nathan over on the Toasty Tech website. It seems like there's more people that are being annoyed by the bright lights than I thought.
I just bought a new Magsafe charger. Something that generally lives in someone's bedroom shouldn't have the brightest fucking blue light I've ever seen on it. But it does.
Took one night to cover that fucker with electrical tape.
Even the small white leds on my pc are annoying, I've recently used a black sharpie to dim them, it did wonders.
Don't even get me started on VEHICLE HEADLIGHTS ! >:(
Police got these super bright LED lights here recently (Germany). When I drive on a countryside road at night and police is in the incoming traffic, I am blinded for at least 15 seconds. I have to stare at my hood and the right strip of the road directly in front of me in order to not just veer off.
I wonder whether I'm just oddly sensitive to light or if someone really fucked up. They are way too bright.
I seem to be fortunate that both my last cable modem and my router have built-in options to turn off all LEDs, even the power LED, for aesthetics.
it gives you a bit more appreciation devs who add in functionality to turn the LED off. My fan has that which is really nice, and my portable AC. Even my access points you can change them.
But still so many products with LED that cannot be changed or disabled so I have to use a piece of electrical tape.
I purchased a black paint marker. When I get new electronics, I turn off the lights at night and all eye-offenders get the hose.
I have a pair of underpants draped over my internet router.😂😂😂 Really defuses the 🔆 🔆 brightness
My router actually has 4 brightness options for the LEDs with one of them being "off". I wish more manufacturers would think about stuff like this.
Just make sure you center the brown part at the back over the LED, as it masks the brightness better than the white cloth
Nothing is more relaxing than falling asleep to the dim, brown light of your router :)
My go-to excuse now when my girlfriend complains about me leaving my underpants on my router. Thank you!
At least you don't live in Japan where everything sings to you
I'm exactly the same as you. One tip I have is if you can open the device use masking tape on the inside of the shell where the lights shine through so it's dimmed but you can still see the lights if you need to/it's helpful to. I do this on some of my handheld gaming consoles so I can play them in bed and not be blinded by the LEDs
The worst is when you find bright LEDs all over a hotel room. Becomes like a buckaroo style puzzle game trying to cover things up with whatever you've brought along with you.
I have a bottle of black nail polish. Every LED in my bedroom (except the smoke detector) is blacked out.
why are they blue!!!
Literally chose not to buy a powerbank because the power button flashed blue as bright as possible. my PC has blue LED's on the front for status indicators, and i put some black nail polish over them to block out about 80% of the light.
It's annoying as fuck, but there is a solution: Masking Tape
It's semi-see-through. so you can still see the status, but it won't be nearly as bright. Add two layers if one isn't enough dimming.
Alternatively Scotch tape + sharpie and multiple layers if you don't have masking tape (source: never thought to use masking tape instead of Scotch tape)
I keep the modem from my ISP in its box with holes cut out for the cables. Even with LEDs covered with an electrical tape, it would just shine its blue blinking lights through all the cooling grilles and light up the whole bedroom in the night.
Search for “blackout tape” or “dimming tape” and you’ll find dark sticky tape in different degrees of transparency that you can use to dull or block these annoying kinds of lights. I learned about it through my wife, whose sleep is easily disturbed.
You shouldn’t have to buy this and make the effort, but I’m trying to make a practical suggestion.
Man, that reminds me of an art installation that I saw many years ago, where an artist set up a bunch of home electronics in a completely dark room so that their LED lights looked like star constellations.
It was kinda beautiful and yet a reminder about all the "light pollution" we get from these devices, basically what you are talking about.
I tried to look up the name of the artist and that art installation, but couldn't find it.
100% agree. I have tape over the lights on my PS5 to keep my room dark at night. Plus I turn all my monitors off...and sometimes put something over my router to cover up all those blinking lights...and the Oculus Quest charging light....
I was so happy when I saw my router had an option to disable all the lights (minus the power light).
I got really annoyed with all of the ones on my devices and finally find something that works, LED light blocking stickers and dimming stickers. The dimming ones are useful to reduce the brightness of you still need to see if something is on.
My biggest complaint about lights at night is my CPAP machine with its screen, indicator light, start stop button light and light on the control knob. The bloody thing is for helping me sleep and lights up the room. Currently I'm designing on a 3d printed cover for it ATM.
I bought some dimming stickers as well. Before, I felt like if I turned down the lights to watch a movie, I was staring into an array of LED indicator lights on all of my devices.
It's so "Big Brother" can still watch you....?! 😅
Bluetack is your friend. The constant red light on our baby monitor was too distracting in the pitch blackness of the night that it kept my kids awake. A small amount of Bluetack and this problem is solved. Not asthectically pleasing but a good option.
My home office is in my bedroom. I've covered what I can with electrical tape but the glow still comes through. Sometimes I just throw dirty t-shirts and socks over things
Sometimes I really need to read stuff like this on the webs, so I can rest assured that I'm indeed a normal human being, and not a filthy uncivilised animal.
I miss having a LED on n'y phone.
Yes, a different coloured small LED to show whether or not there was a new notification was a great feature.
The Nothing Phone is nice for that, but sadly they decided to NOT use RGB and only stick to white LEDs for some weird reason.
Yep, that's basically the only LED that I miss. I used to REALLY like that LED light that would flash to tell me what notifications I had. Different colors for different notifications.
At night I'd just flop the phone over so it doesn't light the room up.
Oh my gosh, yes, this drives me absolutely insane. Appliances should either turn their LEDs off after a few seconds, or not use them at all.
Depending on the device I use electrical tape or the liquid electrical tape. It works quite well at blocking the light.
Wait! There's liquid electrical tape? Why am I just finding out about this now?!?!?!
If you're ever buying your own LEDs, make sure they're 2700K or less, it makes a huge difference in the temperature of light. The annoying part is that manufacturers ship appliances with god awful lightbulbs which, thanks to unfortunate advances, mean they will never die. A blessing and a curse.
Absolutely boils my piss because it's so unnecessary
sorry, it's the future, these are apparently mandatory now.
I always cover or unplug my printer before going to bed because otherwise the little screen will start flashing every 15 minutes.
I feel you man. My mom lived in a house that was build in 2010 and had touch-futuristic-smart-glow-in-the-dark light switches.. They had a bright blue LED in the middle, it drove me crazy. The switches were also packed in groups of two or three.
I genuinely don't understand it in light switches.
The only ones in my house that have them are the bathroom fan controllers, and I have the fancy ones that run the fan for a set amount of time, and the face of the switch uses the LEDs to show you how long it has left to run. And the LEDs on those are VERY dim, with all the lights off they don't light up the whole room.
But who needs them on, like, a ceiling fan controller?? You can see which setting your on, it's a fan. And on light switches it's just insulting.
To find a computer part that doesn't come with lights on it is getting harder. Even parts buried within the case have lights. How I want to destroy those LED lights on my motherboard.
Put a little paint or tape over the led.
I keep a roll of black tape in my bedroom for this exact reason. I have a damned humidifier that has a light under the water tank so the whole thing glows. Who TF designs this crap?
I stayed in a motel recently that had a kitchenette with a mini fridge in the same room as the bed. You can tell management spent extra for this fridge too, since it had a temperature readout and a see-through door. But by god, that bright blue LED temperature display lit up the entire room and kept me up all night. I tried to cover it with some paper, but that only made it spread further. A couple socks draped over the top eventually did the trick.
I got rid of my alarm clock because the led screen was too bright. My phone charger has a bright blue light on it so I have to cover that up to sleep. I almost want to set up my bedroom with no electronics at all but I don't think my wife would go for it
Goes with nothing ever turning off any more. If it all shut off, no lights.
Thank you!! I thought I was the only one. All my new power strips I just bought have a full brightness blue or green standard LED. Like the ones that come in cheap headlamps. It creates a column of blue or green light on the ceiling. I taped over all of them. My new heatpump unit also has a bunch, but mercifully has an "off" button that will just display the Leds for a second when adjusting the temperature or fan, then turns them back off. It also remembers this setting between power cycles. Total breath of fresh air compared to my new (annoying) tea pot that has permanently on LEDs, or my air purifier which also does unless you want it in sleep mode which essentially is the same as turning off the machine.
The sad part is that a lot of my old devices didn't have LEDs, but broke over the years and aren't repairable. And most new ones have chips and LEDs now to be with the times. Makes them more expensive and generally less reliable.
Bright LEDs suck. I've used painters tape before to cover some of the LEDs I've got around the house, and it works pretty alright. It's thin enough to show the light but dim it pretty significantly.
There's a lot of value in a sleeping area that can get really really dark.
I'm ever so grateful for electrical tape.
Back in 2011, I picked up and repaired a busted USB-SATA HDD adapter, and it had the most blinding bright white status light on it.
What did I do? I literally cut that end of the board off with a hacksaw (then carefully filed away stray copper to avoid any shorts). Then I installed a 12 volt receptacle and 16v filter capacitor in its place to be able to power up desktop drives if I want.
Screw them blinding lights though! 👍
Off-topic but the other day someone just complained that he's missing LEDs on his mobile phone LoL
I do the same thing my man. Your pain is my pain... fuck those LEDs.
I appreciate this sentiment, but I kinda dig the LEDs. We just ordered bookshelves that have them installed, and I'm kinda giddy about reading books while be illuminated from the home of the books, lol.
I'm an excessive kinda guy.
Well... to be fair, one of the oldest operating light switches at my grandparents' was a bathroom light switch that had a light inside of it so the switch itself glowed. But it was soft diffuse light, not the glaring direct shine of and LED.
Do really feel you though. When I built my current desktop two years ago, the new case has the power and HDD lights on the top surface, and after I went to bed the first time without turning it off first, I noticed two spotlights being projected onto my ceiling. Turns out there is no diffuser or anything, just relying on the reflection off the sides of the recesses they are in to make the light visible when sitting next to the computer.
Blue LEDs can trigger migraines in us poor saps who are photosensitive, so them being all over the place has been a ton of fun, let me tell you.
I got reddish-brown tints for my glasses and it’s been a lifesaver.
I haven't read someone answering why now is so common. I'm not a product designer or something similar, but our brain evolved to process the visual inputs over other senses. If a product have integrated lights, most of the customers will prefer them instead of products without lights.
So basically is just a sale point, and as many here already told, many of them are unnecessary.
this is a test
This is also a test
LED and face mask manufacturers have conspired to improve sales of both appliance lighting, and sleepwear.
Oh... I was too busy being pissed off at stupid-bright LEDs that I read a dozen comments and forgot to upvote everyone.. whooops.
fun fact: human eyes can actually perceive single photons.
also fun fact: we can shoot single photons.
How do I shoot photons?
I don't know the details but I think it's customary to offer them a last cigarette first
The human eye can physically detect single photons, but I don't believe you can perceive them.
I work from home in my room and I know the struggle. I have electrical tape over several useless LEDs on my office equipment.
I finally gave up and just started sleeping with a mask over my eyes. I can't stand to have any light at all, either.
My fan automatically turns off its LEDs after about 10 seconds. Good design FTW.
I buy these really cool magnetic charging cables. You put an adapter in the charging phone port and the cable just attaches itself.
The only problem is that they have these bright blue LEDs around the end. And on top of that, the LEDs are coated with silicone so you can't even take a sharpie to them.
I have these and wrap black electrical tape around the blue bit. Works great.
I got a pack of static cling ND gels and I cut them down and stack them on displays or small LED's that are too bright. They've been really helpful for things that you don't want to completely block with electrical tape, like an alarm clock.
That shit sucks. When blue LEDs became a thing all sorts of electronics adopted them and they were effin everywehre.
This makes you appreciate professional equipment which is less likely to have those ridiculously bright ones. Lenovo usually have pretty discrete orange LEDs on their professional equipment. The large professional Dell monitor I use at work, while fitted with a white LED, has a very dim one.
I love Lenovo, and I realize you only speak of their professional line-up, but I can't help but mention my Legion PC.
Besides the fancy red lights for when it's on, which are to be expected on a gaming PC, the damn thing also for some reason has a massive bright white triangle logo on its front that blinks when the PC is in sleep mode. I needed to put it into sleep mode overnight one time and it illuminated the entire room
Gaffers Tape may be the best thing ever invented. Next to zip ties and carbonara. I put some on all the little shitty LEDs in my room. It's pitch black in here right now.
Honey, why is there carbonara sauce on the router?
Agreed. Everything I've bought in the last few years has a layer of electrical tape covering the lights.
I hate these, too. I decided to put a compact computer in our bedroom (already a bad plan, I know) to quickly check the security camera at night (I rolled my own, no phone app). I plugged in a mouse I had laying around. I discovered the first night when this particular mouse does not have its custom drivers installed (gimme a break, this is Raspbian not Windows!), it freaking blinks, and in the dead of night it's as bright as a flashlight. Blink. Blink. All night long. I never noticed before because, wackily enough, I rarely compute in complete darkness.
I also have a USB desk fan I thought I might run at night and yes, it has blinky lights when charging. F that, I bought an old Caframo Dragonfly instead... best compact fan ever made, first produced in the 1950s.
its probably there because those leds are dirt cheap and the companies just want as much as possible to advertise about it
I don’t know where you live but I’m very afraid that start happening here in Brazil too. It’s showing a lot of this already and it’s very annoying. Thanks for the tip about the tape, I don’t know that and will look for it.
A soldiering iron comes in handy.
I just remove annoying leds altogether.
I have put black tape on my gamepad, on the led of pc cases, montor power button led, removed led from pc case fans, black skin on inside of transparent case panel. MOST annoying is some of them can't be turned off so you have to strip them out.
It's tangential, but why Nintendo made the Switch without a quick and easy to access brightness setting is beyond me. Is it really so impossible for one of the biggest game console companies in the world to add a drag-from-edge brightness setting into their OS?
I love the games and really like a lot about the console but their software has almost always felt like it was at least a decade behind the rest of the world.
Okay, sorry. Done ranting.
Man I feel you. Sometimes I tape over things even in rooms in only in when there are lights on because it comes with an indicator brighter than a thousand suns.
I miss those old low grade red ones. It also just looks better on black cases.
I'm a bit late and maybe someone already mentioned it, but go onto amazon and order the cheapest darkest car window tinting film. I have it on all of my leds and it makes it a lot more bearable.
Remember when orange was a novelty led color? I can hear the floppy drive buzzing when I see one of the old chunky LEDs in my junk box
I am so happy with my new keyboard in every way apart from the fact that the num pad light etc. is blue and SO BRIGHT to the point where it is almost blinding to look at directly from above, and it lights up my ceiling blue at night, like pointing a torch. I guess it's a sign of quality or whatever but I think it is a tad unnecessary to be that bright. I may end up covering it with a few layers of transparent/tinted tape.
Everything except phones, which actually could do with having them.
(This isn't a completely new thing, in the 1980s I had an A-Team watch that had led lights on it.)
Wow I had no idea this bothered so many people! I’ve had to learn to love with it myself since I had kids, damn night lights everywhere and white noise machines and all that crap. So it doesn’t bother me as much anymore but my god I can’t wait until they’re grown enough to cut all that crap out.
I use black gaffer tape for those things
I have to agree with you. I have tape over numerous items in my bedroom that would otherwise cause too much light at night.
I have black bicycle tape for this exact reason.
I like the customizable LEDs on my razer mouse mat, except when my PC (2021 15.6-inch razer laptop) decides that since I just went 6 hours without installing what are now almost daily win10 patches, it’s time to fuck up my drivers- and then it exits sleep mode despite the lid being closed and there being nothing wrong with my power settings, causing my fans to jet-engine, the logo led thing to come on and the mouse mat to shine brighter than a sun with its default color-cycle thing. And for bonus points, sometimes it even tries to address the problem by actually auto-updating at the time I told it to (1 AM or something), so I get startled by the “du dun, duh dun doooooo” which always seems louder at night.
And I dare not switch to linux, as razer laptops are not a common laptop choice and therefore it’s unclear how I’d be able to keep all its complicated and already-buggy drivers and proprietary software up to date so they don’t make it overheat within the first week, especially since the odds of me finding any help online for converting such an exotic rig to ubuntu are minimal to none.
I do open those pesky devices and cut the LEDs out
I also use sticky notes like @RedHandsome@kbin.social. I've tried electrical tape but I don't like how it goes gunky after a while.
I have a lutron maestro light switch that has LED lights, but I like it. I can see it when I walk to the bathroom at night or when I walk into the apartment and it's dark. I also like the LEDs in my keyboard. But that's it. I have my monitor lights covered, and the USB charger, router, and power bar lights might end up with similar treatments soon.
agreed. Its really annoying. I actually bought the humidifier I did because they advertised it as having a setting to turn off the power LED.
I remember the Nintendo Wii was terrible about this. Like if they pushed an update, the disk drive would just start glowing the brightest blue ever until you did something about it
I use Black Masking tape to cover them a bunch. It cuts the blinding glare, but you can still see them, as they're often integral configuration.
Guess I have the unpopular opinion here but I like leds 🤷♂️
i have an arduino starter kit and the blue LEDs could light up the entire house
i agree. tho the blue light thing is blown a bit out of proportion. The luminance just isnt high enough considering how much blue light the sun emits.
The thing that helps the most with sleep is turning down the brightness of your phone to minimum for when u in the dark and trying to sleep. Or just dont use it lol.
Bright LED's are unnecessary. Hell, most LED's are unnecessary.
I had to pop open my daughter's wipe warmer to yank out a bunch of useless LEDs that were keeping her up. Why can't we just have a damned off switch?
my steam deck has this annoying retina burning white led that turns on while its charging, shit lights up my entire room, and i have a huge room, thankfully it can be turned off in its bios
my monitor also has this feature to turn it off... i hope more companies put in a feature to turn it off
I usually end up blocking them all with permanent marker. They’re damn irritating.
To piggyback on this... so many people have added permanent LED lights to the outside of their houses (at least in our area). It used to be fun to see a house or two lit up with current holiday colors, or sports team colors. But now there are several on each block, and they have become much brighter. On the 4th we were up on a hill watching fireworks and there was a lot of competition from the LED houses.
I mean, you don't don't compare a bit before you buy? My clock only lights up on sound or if i tap it.
FOR REAL
I can't find a WiFi light switch without an led on the buttons that you can't disable, it's so frustrating
Tplink Kasa WiFi AC plugs have the ability to turn the led off. I suspect the switches do too?
It's also difficult to buy a power strip without a light nowadays. The ones without a switch+light are even more expensive, if you can find it....
I don't understand why the need a light AND a switch. Is the switch not indicator enough?
I bought a snowball microphone. It has the brightest goddamned red led on the front. It juts out like some rectangular boil and it's annoying as it is ugly.
So I had to cut off some black electric tape to cover it. The light is ALWAYS on. Maybe it's to let you know it could be recording, but since it's always on no matter what I'm doing, being always off is the same thing.
For what it's worth, I have a fan that lets you turn off the LED lights, even from the remote control for the fan. /shrug
I installed a heated/lighted medicine cabinet in my master bathroom without realizing the blue LED touch controls would be bright enough to light up the bathroom and bedroom. Now I regret spending so much money on it.
Andy Rooney would be proud.
Yah agree with your rant but black electric tape was my solution too.
I started just taping over the lights of anything in my bedroom. I figure if it also makes a goofy noise when it turns on, thats how I know its frickin' on.
I was actually complaining about the exact same thing yesterday! I had to use a putty-like adhesive to cover a lot of those bright af LEDs. It’s indeed infuriating.
I agree it sucks.
I also get frustrated with how ubiquitous they've become. I want darkness in my house at night, I don't like LEDs winking at me from all over the place and I hate placing electrical tape over them but there are few options that aren't permanently damaging.
Try googly eyes?
What someone needs to do is go retro
I want an appliance with an analog clock, an alarm, a red power on light, a blue LED light, Bluetooth, and an app. Preference for ones that get easily hacked by Russia do they can harass women journalists and subvert democracy.
I put electrical tape over all of them. They're unnecessary, they're annoying.
I tried my best to build a new computer without any LEDs and I couldn't. So now I just keep a piece of cardboard in front of my glass case side so I don't have to look at that bullshit.
Yeah, yeah, it probably causes it to run hotter. I'll take a little more heat, less performance, and possibly shorter overall component life over having to deal with those stupid lights.
Buy a paint pen to darken how bright they are or just use a tiny piece of electrical tape. I too hate that every goddamn thing these days has a light, but the only indication if a feature on a device is on or off is by looking at the lights, so they are unfortunately an important thing.
That's not true though, if your oscillating fan is not plugged in then it won't spin. There's a clear difference between the on/off state.
I can't think of any device in my house that has an LED in it that really needs one to indicate on/off state. The power strips all have an on/off switch on them that clearly incicates whether you have it turned on. The devices with LEDs in the plugs will indicate whether they are on or off based on whether they work when plugged in, having an LED in the plug is just useless.
Didn't see if anyone else recommend it, but there's dimming tape you can get in sheets or rolls. I can't stand my room being lit up by every damn device needing to show that it's on! I put it on nearly every LED in my bedroom, double layer for those damn blue LEDS that are always ultra bright. For things I can't fit it on, there's always black sharpie or like OP said, paint pens.
I built my first PC in a Bitfenix Prodigy. The blue LEDs they used for the power and HDD activity lights were brighter than a thousand suns. I ended up disconnecting them.
Some weeks ago I purchased a new keyboard and did'nt realized that there is a ridiculously bright charging LED in top that shines right in your eyes.
In the end in my lazy manner I fixed it with electrical tape. It even shines trough the black tape.
it's like living in Tron. it's not as cool as I thought it would be when I was a kid.
Couldn't agree more!
I take whatever it is and I usually rip it off 😂 I did that with my GPU so that I only have a slightly bright led of ROG on the backplate, that way it really discreet and not a eye catcher, and not a "eye burner" like it was