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FrameworkComputer / framework-system

Rust libraries and tools to interact with the Framework Computer systems
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
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Request: Ability to turn the fingerprint LED off completely #37

Open tangowithfoxtrot opened 4 months ago

tangowithfoxtrot commented 4 months ago

The fingerprint/power LED can be controlled thanks to the work done in #9. Being able to set this to "low" is very much appreciated, but it would be nice to have to option to turn it off completely.

Is disabling the LED completely possible?

JohnAZoidberg commented 4 months ago

That's an interesting idea. But one of the purposes of the power button LED is to let you know whether the system is awake or asleep.

When the system is asleep/suspended the power button LED shows a breathing animation. If it's always off, you can't distinguish between the system being asleep or just screen off.

Please help me understand the reason and situation in which you'd like to have the LED turned off completely. Maybe we can figure out a good solution.

tangowithfoxtrot commented 4 months ago

The reason I'd like to have the LED completely off is that in the dark, even low brightness is pretty distracting and un-easy on my eyes, particularly when using dark themes or watching movies, where you generally don't want other sources of light interfering with your viewing experience. I usually disable the keyboard backlight as well in those situations, so having a light that can't be disabled there is a bit of a bummer.

The suspend situation you described is definitely a trade-off though. For me, it's one I'd be willing to make, as it makes my general usage much more pleasant, and my laptop is set to wake from suspend when I open the lid, so I don't have to worry about the indicator being a source of truth for that. I figure that mostly anyone using the input module CLIs would be pretty aware of any configurations that they've done in that regard and adapt their expectations for how the light behaves accordingly.

Either way, thanks for your response and consideration!

tangowithfoxtrot commented 4 months ago

Alternatively, if an "off" mode is considered to be too niche of a request, maybe offer an "ultra-low" mode that illuminates the LED at the lowest possible value it can be while still being on. This would be a compromise for me, as I'd still like to remove any extraneous distractions from the screen when using it in low-light environments, but it's an improvement.

Another alternative might be to allow adjusting by percentage values and letting people set it to 0%, but I'm not sure if the underlying firmware supports that or how much additional work would be involved in making that work.