Webcam/mic switches on/off positions

Framework Laptop 13
1

After receiving the Framework Laptop 13 AMD edition a few weeks back I’m still trying to get everything set up the way I want it. Most things work well without a lot of hassle, but I have been surprised by the choice of the on/off positions on the hardware switches for the webcam and mic.

My assumption here is that people who want features like this tend to have them switched off by default and only enable them when necessary. Since the non-default state should be more visible to the user, I assumed that the red/orange indicator meant that the switch was in the on state - i.e. recording. Now I just found out that this is not the case and it is actually the opposite: red/orange means off and black means on, so the desired “default” state is more obvious than the “something is wrong, are you sure you want this?”-state.

Since these are hardware switches which actually cut the power to these components (this is awesome, thanks for that!) there’s no way to swap the behavior in software. Are there any plans to produce bezels where either the colors are swapped or the notch on the back is moved to produce the opposite behavior? I would definitely be in the market for something like that!

2

I think it’s because they use light sensor switch. If the sensor is blocked, it means it is off (red on bezel.) If the sensor is not blocked, it means the light can passthrough to the sensor. You will see it’s black because it’s on the pcb which behind the bezel. You can switch it to off and just split bezel. You will see the system can detect camera and microphone.

I’m not sure in this scenario that it can be switch. It is a physical color plastic.

3

Red means off, once you have learned it, it’s easy to remember. Not a big deal.

4 Likes
4

I wonder if anyone has tried popping out the switches so they could change the colors with paint.

5

I have looked at the back of the bezel and it looks like all the plastic parts have been melted together. No easy way to modify it from what I saw.

6

My assumption is that most customers probably don’t care that much about privacy features and would like a cleaner (black) look by default. The red also acts as a warning signal, “hey, there’s something turned off here, check this switch if the webcam isn’t working”.

7

I understand that there are different ways to look at this, which is why I was hoping that it would be possible to choose the behavior of the switches in the future. If this would mean swapping out the bezel then I would be fine with that.