The one that got on my nerves recently is a little bedside 3-in-1 wireless charger.

Has one of the brightest LEDs I've seen lately right on front of the charger whenever a device is on it. Why would they put a bright light on a night-stand accessory, and put it in the front where its shining right into your eyes as you try to sleep?

Or better yet, why have an LED on it at all in the first place? Any device I'm putting on it has its own charging indicator, I don't need the charger itself to have one.

I much prefer two or three coats of black nail polish. It looks much nicer than tape, is more durable, and the light can barely be seen - just enough to see it when you want to. Like it should have been from the factory.

I use stickers designed for dimming LEDs. They’re almost like a thick window tint cut into various shapes. Dim enough to stop the LED from being annoying but you can still see its status.

A little more expensive, but they look a little nicer too.

Most of my devices have had ways to turn them off.

Router has a button which disable all lights until it's pressed again, monitors have the setting in their menus.

The only device thats shining brightly in my home is a storage controller I've got in my home server, with no way of turning it off - or at least dimming it down

yeah my routers' LEDs are obnoxiously bright, luckily they have an option in the app to turn it off on a schedule. The super bright green LED in my smoke detector unfortunately does not have this option. Nor do the blue LEDs in my smart outlets...

IME consumer electronics have gotten a lot better about this, but appliances and other things outside the tech sphere are still awful. My portable AC unit has a bright-as-hell seven-segment display for the temperature which shows "--" even when it's turned off!

Can't vouch for every model, but on all the ThinkPads I've owned every single LED can be disabled, including on the X13 I got last year.[1] This is actually one reason I buy ThinkPads. Other models I've had were T61, X270, E585, X280. I've heard the Carbon models are quite different from the T/X ones, so maybe you can't disable on those? That would be disappointing.

If you're on Linux the dot on the cover is /sys/class/leds/tpacpi::lid_logo_dot. See the other files in that directory for other LEDs.

I don't know about Windows off-hand because I don't use it, but the BIOS exposes the functionality so there should be a program to do it. In a quick search: https://github.com/valinet/ThinkPadLEDControl

FreeBSD doesn't support it, but quite easy to write a patch for it if you want it (I actually wrote a patch for this, but didn't really put the finishing touches on it and submit it as my previous one got no feedback at all, so *shrug* – I ended up just installing Linux again). Same for the other BSDs.

[1]: You need to compile your own kernel for the charging/power LED which wasn't needed on older models, because that's registered as "unknown LED" and protected behind a compile option. It's a tad annoying, but it's possible.

Telling people they're doing something annoying / dangerous / etc is surprisingly effective. Ask the person smoking next to you to move downwind. Ask the neighbor next door to turn down the TV. Ask the tourist in public transport to move their suitcase so it doesn't block the door. Works every time, most of the time.

If you mean rear extra bright red lights those are for fog to prevent being rear-ended. If there was no fog it is illegal. Whether or not it is enforced depends on location, agencies, priorities. Example usage would be in Bakersfield, CA there is a location that at times goes from clear to not being able to see lights 2 feet away nearly instantly. Beyond pea-soup fog. It's a very unnerving experience if one is not ready for it.

> Depending on the neighbours, may be asking for more trouble

Idk, I’d consider it highly provocative if a neighbour installed anything on or tampered with my property without not only my permission but even the decency of notification. At that point, they not only lose the benefit of doubt but the benefit of civility since I’m not sure what other social conventions and laws they may be comfortable casually violating.

Sure, but we don't know that. Besides, it's becoming increasingly common to avoid confrontation. A lot of people might consider it too much trouble because they don't know their neighbors. If you don't go in angry/"swinging" then people are usually pretty reasonably

Seems the authorities were here already.

To reply to this and the above comment:

Cheapest light pipe on digikey: 16 cents Cheapest photodiode on digikey: 11 cents Cheapest LED (obviously that annoying blue): 625 milli cents!

Part costs matter! Its not just the BOM, its the NRE from the increased complexity. Im not saying saying its OK, just that its inevitable considering the economic conditions.

I do board level designs and drop down LEDs. If you are not specialising in indicators, its hard to visualise how bright 10mA through your diode is going to be. Add to this that sometimes you never even see the thing you designed!

You don't even need to do that. You can measure ambient light with the LED, using it as a photodiode

The entire advertising industry is cancer.

Hey now, don't blame us PC users. It's almost impossible to buy decent hardware that isn't RGB`d up the wazoo. Do I want all that crap lighting? No. Do I have a choice? No.