Electrical tape to black it out.

Painters tape to dim it.

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.

Car headlight are too fucking bright nowadays

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

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.

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 miss the days of red LEDs. I understand blue were new and novel at one point but that's passed.

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??

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.

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.

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 have opened up devices to physically remove the led. SMD LEDs stand no chance against a steady hand and a precision flathead screwdriver.

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.

It's hard to find a PC case that doesn't look like a disco.

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...

I know your rage.

I ended up buying LED dimming stickers off Amazon and went hog wild on all the devices in the house.

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"

Y'all need some Light Dims (yes, that website didn't enter the 21st century, but their product is luckily solid).

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.

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.

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 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.

I've taken too darkening them with a sharpie.

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.

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?

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.

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 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

Obviously you need that idle indicator light to give off more lumens than a 2D Maglite all night long right?

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Even the small white leds on my pc are annoying, I've recently used a black sharpie to dim them, it did wonders.

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?

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.

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.

Don't even get me started on VEHICLE HEADLIGHTS ! >:(

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.

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.

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....

At least you don't live in Japan where everything sings to you

I have a bottle of black nail polish. Every LED in my bedroom (except the smoke detector) is blacked out.

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 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.

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.

I have a pair of underpants draped over my internet router.😂😂😂 Really defuses the 🔆 🔆 brightness

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.

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.

I miss having a LED on n'y phone.

Absolutely boils my piss because it's so unnecessary

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.

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.

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

Depending on the device I use electrical tape or the liquid electrical tape. It works quite well at blocking the light.

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.

sorry, it's the future, these are apparently mandatory now.

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.

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.

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

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.

There's a lot of value in a sleeping area that can get really really dark.

I'm ever so grateful for electrical tape.

fun fact: human eyes can actually perceive single photons.

also fun fact: we can shoot single photons.

Goes with nothing ever turning off any more. If it all shut off, no lights.

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 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.

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.

I always cover or unplug my printer before going to bed because otherwise the little screen will start flashing every 15 minutes.

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.

Off-topic but the other day someone just complained that he's missing LEDs on his mobile phone LoL

Oh... I was too busy being pissed off at stupid-bright LEDs that I read a dozen comments and forgot to upvote everyone.. whooops.

Even some fucking light switches have them now!

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.

I work from home in my room and I know the struggle. I have electrical tape over several useless LEDs on my office equipment.

LED and face mask manufacturers have conspired to improve sales of both appliance lighting, and sleepwear.

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.

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.

this is a test

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.

I do the same thing my man. Your pain is my pain... fuck those LEDs.

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! 👍

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 just throw clothes over the air purifier to cover the light when I sleep. To be fair, it does have a "sleep mode" that has only a tiny light, but it doesn't make enough noise to help me sleep.

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.

its probably there because those leds are dirt cheap and the companies just want as much as possible to advertise about it

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.

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.

A soldiering iron comes in handy.

I just remove annoying leds altogether.

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 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.

Agreed. Everything I've bought in the last few years has a layer of electrical tape covering the lights.

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 have to agree with you. I have tape over numerous items in my bedroom that would otherwise cause too much light at night.

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 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 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.

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.)

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.

I use black gaffer tape for those things

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 do open those pesky devices and cut the LEDs out

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 have black bicycle tape for this exact reason.

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?

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 wonder which of those appliances will stop working if I drill into the LED with a micro drill... Tape is good, but not perfect. I have a bluetooth speaker in my bedroom, and of all colours it has to use bright blue LEDs as a power on indicator :-( I have the speaker now in a leather bag at night, which does not exactly improve the sound quality.

I agree it sucks.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

it's like living in Tron. it's not as cool as I thought it would be when I was a kid.

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 mean, you don't don't compare a bit before you buy? My clock only lights up on sound or if i tap it.

Yah agree with your rant but black electric tape was my solution too.

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.

Andy Rooney would be proud.

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.

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.

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....

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.

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 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.

My computer lighting is powered by incandescent bulbs. Lots of replacing, heat and landfll usage but its worth it to not have any of those woke leds in there.

I usually end up blocking them all with permanent marker. They’re damn irritating.

They don't belong on car headlights either. Because, every time, they're going to be abused by drivers at night. They're even unhelpful to see road signs, too. Because when the light is focused on them, I noticed I have such a hard time reading the white text on the reflective green background. It's obnoxious and such an eyesore.

Yeppers. I've got tape in numerous places around my apartment. I even have some tissue boxes placed just proper.

I also have the same problem with Luke LEDs, which is why I have a lot of black electrical tape all around my room. If it's a blue light I cannot turn off, I just tape over it.

Yes! I had to use tape to black out the LEDs on devices in my bedroom because I could see all manner of blinking lights once I dimmed the room lights.

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

Couldn't agree more!

More cyberpunk vibes

As you noted, lack electrical tape is your friend, on these. So annoying, but it works well. I got a headset where the charging base blinks green on and off, basically 24/7. Black tape was the first thing I did, even before using hte headset for the first time.

I think they massively improve this Pergola:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/8exwx0Nu9TU?rel=0

My speakers have this same issue, lights up the whole room

Did I hear you say you wanted LED Nut Rings? You'll literally see yourself coming!

I just don't buy anything with bright LEDs, if it doesn't require it to function then I don't want it if they want to add useless indicators to something that doesn't need it then they don't need my business

A double layer of electric tape for everything i don’t want. But I like it kind of. I’m scared of total darkness so I even use my always on display as kind of a night light.

I have a portable speaker that I love, but it has this stupid ring of light at the top that brings in different colors and drives me nuts. Luckily it is able to be turned off. It still drives me mad that I have to turn it off each time, though.

cool

I'm confused a bit by this honestly. Power strips are easy to hide where they are not visible. In their case, an LED is actually preferable to know the state of the power strip and I have several power strips that don't have any LEDs. I also don't think I've ever seen a power strip with a blue LED. None of my charging adapters have LEDs and it's extremely rare for me to find one that does. The default iPhone/Android chargers don't have LED and you can adapt them to work with like 90% of electronics these days because everything just uses USB. If you don't want an digital clock, then don't buy a digital clock? I also searched for a floor fan and 95% of the results appear to have no LEDs.

If LEDs are such a problem, I'd recommend not buying things with LEDs in them? It seems like it's actually difficult to run into the problem you're experiencing.

I'm pretty sure all this "blue light screws up your brain for sleep" is complete hornswaggle nonsense.

I CAN understand why bright light of any color temperature could muck up getting to sleep but I think that's about it.

On taping over bright LEDs that don't need to be there though, that I'm with you on.

Alec Watson enters the chat

You must be buying crap. I have lots and lots of electronic devices, flashlights too and the indicator lights on the vast majority of them aren't as bright as you're saying.

You might have some kind of problem with your eye sight.

Try closing your eyes next time, that way you can't see the light