Mildly Infuriating

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

Sadly appliances with useful dimming options are getting very rare.

In the same boat as OP and other commenters: electrical tape and sharpies FTW

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?

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.

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 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.

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

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.

You can't tell anyone this, but I have a friend who is deep inside the insurance industry. Some of the big guys have invested heavy into LEDs. So to maximize the LED investments, they give manufacturers safety discounts for every LED they can attach to their shit. Big guys make some extra zeros for their accounts, and sharpie and 3M get some splash, too.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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....

fun fact: human eyes can actually perceive single photons.

also fun fact: we can shoot single photons.

I miss having a LED on n'y phone.

To find a computer part that doesn't come with lights on it is getting harder. Even parts buried within the case have lights. How I want to destroy those LED lights on my motherboard.

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