I’m using KDE Plasma 6.1 on Wayland and having trouble turning on my keyboard backlight. I’ve checked the system settings but haven’t found a dedicated option.
I’m using a Custom PC.
Does anyone have any tips on enabling the keyboard backlight on this setup, or are there any common methods that might work?
System Details :
Operating System: KDE neon 6.0
KDE Plasma Version: 6.1.1
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.3.0
Qt Version: 6.7.0
Kernel Version: 6.5.0-41-generic (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 12 × 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i5-11400 @ 2.60GHz
Memory: 7.5 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® Graphics
Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Product Name: H510M S2H V2
On most non-laptop keyboards, backlighting is controlled by the keyboard itself, via dedicated function keys. A good number of them also support being controlled by software on a PC, but not all.
They may require special applications for this. There are a number of tools for it on Linux, though not for all keyboards . But most likely something exists for the better known brands and models.
You gave us plenty of good info about your computer, but you did forget the important part: What specific keyboard do you have?
Back when I had a logitech g510 keyboard, there was a file somewhere under /sys/class/backlight where you could write an RGB value. These days though I have a mechanical keyboard that manages its own backlight. So I can’t tell you the exact file to look for, sorry. But if there is one, it should be there.
It could also be under /sys/class/leds, which also provides access to e.g. CapsLock LEDs and such.
If UPower detects a keyboard backlight, Plasma will provide a slider in the “Brightness and Color” applet for selecting the backlight intensity anywhere between Off and the maximum level.
The easiest way to get many RGB LED and backlit keyboards is to use a program called “OpenRGB.” It will detect all RGB controllers (keybard and system LEDS) on your system and allow it to be set accordingly, including “effects” like pulse and wave. For simplicity sake, I use the Appimage (you do need to use a sudo shell - “sudo -s”).
Use open RGB to set the lights on the keyboard, and then use a script by Jsubelj to set the macro keys. One caveat with the 910 is that the macro key script seems to cause OpenRGB to fail to detect the LED controller after you install it, so if you lose power or unplug the keyboard, you will need to use a LiveUSB or dual boot to reset it.
I just tried OpenRGB, but it didn’t work for my keyboard It failed to detect my device.
My keyboard’s Backlight is just on and off, there is no other functionality, Like controlling Color or brightness.
Windows often uses the function keys without needing the Fn key by default. Try using Fn-f12.
My Logitech G413 (non RGB) uses F7, but I need to use Fn+f7 to adjust the brightness.
You may be able to switch between needing Fn key and not, so check your user manual. On some I have had, this is switching to “Apple” compatibility mode. Not all keyboards will hav e this sort of setting or option, though.
These are just LEDs for a few individual keys. It doesn’t look like the kernel exposes backlight functionality for the keyboard as a whole. If OpenRGB also doesn’t have some other kind of support, I fear that it may not be able to switch the backlight through software commands. At least not with current software versions, maybe it’s possible but not implemented right now.
On several of my laptops, I’ve been able to control the keyboard backlight by installing the Kde plasmoid widget named “Brightness and Color”, the keyboard brightness control is between the display brightness and the Night Color
Did you run OpenRGB in a sudo shell? For me, the simple “sudo openrgb” does not work, and you need to do “sudo -s” to get into an interactive shell first. Don’t know why this is, but its what I have had to do since the beginning.
No, I just installed the software from flatpack, Then I said to install some rules maybe, via a bash file. But after the setup was complete, it didn’t detect my device
That might be the issue. The OpenRGB team does NOT have an official flatpack. They have a deb or an appimage. 3rd party Flatpack sandbox is likely interfering with the low level access it needs. Download the appimage, set it to be executable, and run it in an interactive sudo shell from a terminal. You only need to run it once, unless you unplug your keyboard or have a power outage - it does not need a persistent install.
Hi, i have a similar problem. Have you found a solution by now?
I switched from W10 to Linux 3 days ago (Cachy OS with Wayland), and am very much a Linux novice.
I use a Cooler Master Storm keyboard with LED-Backlight turned on / off via ScrollLock. This worked like a charm in W10. Much to my surprise, in Linux it doesn’t, for whatsoever reasons.
This renders my keyboard useless, as i can’t identify the proper keys without the backlight.
I searched the interwebs and tried the tips from this post as well.
OpenRGB doesen’t recognize my keyboard, no matter how i use it (appimage, aur, with installed udev-rules etc.)
The Udev rules do not expose all the available controllers. Run OpenRGB as sudo/root. Up until 24.04 rebase, Udev did not work at all for me.
Doing a quick check, “Cooler Master Storm” is not listed as supported on the OpenRGB website, but perhaps it is not called that in the list. You should check their compatibly list directly.
