Allow dimming or disabling charge LEDs on FW 13

Framework Laptop 13
1

The Scenario

My working desk is in the same room that I sleep in, and I charge my FW Laptop at night, so I have it ready for university the next morning. I need a dark room to be able to sleep, but the FW charging LED is super bright. To be able to sleep I currently put some clothes on top of the laptop, which is annoying to do every evening and probably not the most secure thing to put on top of a charging device :expressionless:

Workarounds I have considered

  1. Some people suggest removing the light pipes or desoldering the LEDs, which for me is not an option as I don’t want to do permanent damage to my FW.
  2. I have seen other users being able to control the LEDs via ectool. I tried but didn’t get it to work (it was unable to connect to the EC). I have the AMD model, maybe that’s the problem…?

My Suggestion

  1. There is already an option to control the power LED brightness in the BIOS. It would be cool to have a similar setting for the charging LEDs; Something like bright, dim and off.
  2. Of course when disabling the charge LEDs, you lose the ability to check whether the laptop is charging at all and whether it is fully charged. For me this is a good price to pay because I can be sure the battery will be full after a full night of charging and even if I want to know the charge I can just check my OS.
  3. BONUS: If you want the LED to be off, but also want to check whether charging works when plugging in the cable, there could be another option called indicate or flash or something, which when plugging in power will quickly light up the charging LED to show it is charging and then after a few seconds switch it off.

I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one having this issue and would be very happy to hear your solutions to this problem; But I’d be even more happy to hear from the Framework Team, whether the fix mentioned in the My Suggestion section is something possible and worth implementing! Thank you!

2

I’m sure someone will come up with a 3D printed clip that would go over the LED to block the light.

3

You mean the tiny light between the expansion ports?

  1. Ensure it points a way from you
  2. Cover with a small piece of tape to dim or bluetack etc.

Using clothes is a bit crazy

4

Yes, I’m talking about the LEDs between the expansion card slots.
I do actually have a 3D printer but covering it with either a printed piece of plastic or a piece of tape, I don’t feel like this is a durable solution as it will fall off when using normally (handling, backpack, etc.) and also I want to preserve the clean look that the FW13 has…
The only option for me if there is really no way to do this in software is trying to put a piece of tape on the inside of the chassis.

5

If you are looking for a permanent solution, as in tape on the inside which I don’t think will work so nicely, you can just paint over it with a) a black nail varnish and then b) go over with a grey metal one. Did that on a phone, just black, and lasted for years.

There are good tapes that won’t come off and won’t be noticeable too.

In fact silver nail varnish will do, it will dim it considerably on it’s own depending and you can add more layers.

Just spray paint may do to.

I can’t quite get that it is so bright to effect sleep unless you put it by you head ??

6

Hey, thanks for those suggestions!
Where would you apply the nail polish? On the ouside of the chassis?
I’m really worried about damaging anything, even if it is only spray paint |:
Also yes, it is not that bright but I’m used to sleeping in ABSOLUTE DARKNESS so even a tiny light like this is a problem O.o

1 Like
7

Yes on the outside. Just dab on the LED

I’ve used nail varnish for many things.
The main one is going over cracked screens with clear varnish to keep moisture out and make it smooth