Yes, an external indicator would be very useful - I too miss this feature from my old laptop (a Thinkpad).
I like @moody_influence’s suggestion (but I have no idea if it’s technically possible).
Right now the only way for me to tell if it’s asleep when the lid is closed is by pinging the machine - if ping gets a response, it’s probably asleep… (of course this is also a good sign because it means that the laptop is so silent that you can’t tell by ear if it’s running)
In the 13 body machine at least, the bezel leaves a small gap on the bottom of the lid (back of the lid when closed) through which the LED is visible when suspended, when looking at the closed laptop from that side.
On that body with the AMD platform at least, the LED does keep pulsing when s2idle sleeping. Interestingly BTW the pulse pattern changes when the lid is closed. Instead of the “normal” single pulse when the machine starts sleeping with the lid still open, it switches to a double pulse.
Anyway, I think a trick mod would be to add a light refractor/diffuser in that gap to direct it to the side of the lid:
Edit: Looking at the lid-closing movement, it gets too tight during the close so sticking the diffuser to the top of the body just to the right of the power button might be a more feasible option. A modified bezel would also work but that’s more involved.
That doesn’t always work for me.
It seems to work when I send the laptop to sleep and then close the lid.
But when I close the lid and it goes to sleep automatically, the powerbutton LED goes and remains off
On Fedora 39 a simple script can indicate with one of the side leds that the the FW 13 intel has been suspended to RAM.
Install fw-ectool first
For instructions see:
https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/bsvh/fw-ectool/
Then, add a simple systemd script in :
usr/lib/systemd/system-sleep/
And name it e.g. leds. Make the script executable.
#!/bin/sh
## location : /usr/lib/systemd/system-sleep/leds
if [ "${1}" == "pre" ]; then
ectool led right blue
elif [ "${1}" == "post" ]; then
ectool led right auto
fi
As a result, when the laptop is in a suspended state, the right side led will show blue.
As simple as that!
Kind regards,
Otto
That’s… impressive. I feel this should be pinned as a “bonus” step in the Fedora setup guide.