by atticora on 1/1/24, 2:15 PM
I 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.
by kelahcim on 1/1/24, 10:52 PM
It 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.
by mrweasel on 1/1/24, 1:25 PM
Why 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?
by neilv on 1/1/24, 8:30 PM
I 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.)
by woutersf on 1/2/24, 3:11 AM
Only 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.
by Groxx on 1/1/24, 8:18 PM
Nail 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)
by dessant on 1/1/24, 12:48 PM
LightDims 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.htmby flir on 1/1/24, 1:36 PM
Quality 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).
by AdrianB1 on 1/1/24, 2:42 PM
2 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.
by twic on 1/1/24, 8:44 PM
I 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.
by AnotherGoodName on 1/2/24, 12:37 AM
The 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.
by kwhitefoot on 1/1/24, 1:03 PM
by gumby on 1/1/24, 8:55 PM
> 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]”
by quechimba on 1/2/24, 1:22 PM
I'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.
by dvh on 1/1/24, 1:14 PM
I 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.
by mkj on 1/1/24, 2:03 PM
Soldering 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.
by zh3 on 1/1/24, 10:41 PM
PSA: 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.
by edgartaor on 1/2/24, 12:41 AM
by Findecanor on 1/1/24, 2:49 PM
I 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
by barnabee on 1/1/24, 3:58 PM
Hotel rooms are the worst for unwanted LEDs! I now carry blackout tape when I travel.
by wlesieutre on 1/2/24, 2:08 AM
by gka on 1/2/24, 8:02 AM
It 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.
by BenFranklin100 on 1/2/24, 3:38 AM
What 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.
by Razengan on 1/1/24, 11:47 PM
One 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.
by nfriedly on 1/2/24, 2:59 AM
I 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/LYjypgby cratermoon on 1/2/24, 12:31 AM
Blue is the worst color for a bedroom. Physiologically it's the most "alert" light, like a blue sky. It ruins night vision, too.
by user3939382 on 1/1/24, 3:03 PM
They sell packs of various size stickers specifically for blocking these lights on Amazon. They’re very cheap and work perfectly.
by nyanpasu64 on 1/1/24, 9:59 PM
I 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.
by magospietato on 1/2/24, 1:08 AM
A 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.
by emmelaich on 1/1/24, 10:56 PM
A 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.
by efitz on 1/1/24, 11:18 PM
It 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
by Rebelgecko on 1/1/24, 11:57 PM
A 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.
by anonu on 1/1/24, 10:39 PM
I'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.
by tanseydavid on 1/3/24, 5:03 PM
I 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.
by amluto on 1/1/24, 11:47 PM
One 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.
by JoshTriplett on 1/1/24, 10:25 PM
I 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.
by Podgajski on 1/1/24, 4:04 PM
And I’m wondering how much power is wasted by the literally billions of these status indicating LEDs…
by whalesalad on 1/2/24, 4:11 AM
I 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.
by INTPenis on 1/1/24, 3:16 PM
I 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.
by orenlindsey on 1/1/24, 8:21 PM
You 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.
by bluescrn on 1/1/24, 8:34 PM
Black 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.
by kazinator on 1/1/24, 11:59 PM
I'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.
by stevage on 1/2/24, 3:09 AM
I'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...
by narag on 1/1/24, 11:33 PM
by ewams on 1/1/24, 10:09 PM
Bought 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.
by lazyeye on 1/1/24, 9:07 PM
by SanjayMehta on 1/1/24, 2:14 PM
Had 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.
by Scrapemist on 1/1/24, 8:23 PM
Just 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.
by tastysandwich on 1/2/24, 12:53 AM
I bought a roll of red brake-light tape off Amazon when my daughter was born. Covered every little light in the house. Highly recommended!
by silveira on 1/2/24, 12:09 AM
These 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.
by jacobsenscott on 1/2/24, 1:29 AM
Certainly every product designer knows how annoying these things are. Who are the pointy haired bosses forcing them add these leds?
by juancn on 1/1/24, 11:55 PM
I 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.
by newsclues on 1/1/24, 1:40 PM
Tape is cheap, removable and blocks light.
by pnathan on 1/1/24, 9:29 PM
I 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.
by groestl on 1/1/24, 2:12 PM
Had an USB charger once that would shine through one layer of black electrical tape. Crazy.
by radar1310 on 1/1/24, 1:48 PM
I’ve used lightdims for years. Great product to lesson the bright lights.
by JohnFen on 1/2/24, 6:09 PM
Personally, I find fixing them to be easy: I remove the LED.
by powersnail on 1/1/24, 10:46 PM
Edit: didn't read the article carefully enough.
by vidarh on 1/1/24, 7:08 PM
I just bought sheets of small stickers.
by jnsaff2 on 1/1/24, 10:21 PM
Kapton tape.
by Baldbvrhunter on 1/1/24, 9:59 AM
great hack
my pet peeve is flashing indicators, especially when it means "all normal"