Keyboards with the backlit feature look cool. Well, it’s not the standard feature in all the keyboards, many brands have started providing backlit keyboards in their mid-range laptops. If you are someone who often works in low-lighting environments, you will love this feature for sure. Different laptops come comes different ways to turn keyboard lighting on and off. Most of the laptops use an illumination icon on the key to represent that it controls backlighting. However, sometimes it’s not enough for the general users.

Keyboard Lighting On/Off

  • Turning HP Keyboard Lighting On/Off: Most of the HP laptops that come with a backlit keyboard have an icon showing three small horizontal squares with glow lines Read more
  • Turning Dell Keyboard Lighting On/Off: You can look for the glowing rectangle icon on the function keys and use the same to turn keyboard lighting on/off Read more
  • Turning Asus Keyboard Lighting On/Off: On Asus laptops, you have to look for tiny glowing keyboard icon on function keys Read more
  • Turning Mac Keyboard Lighting On/Off: Mac laptops come with a flat rectangle with glow lines icon on function keys to represent that these keys can be used to adjust the keyboard backlight Read more
  • Turning Lenovo Keyboard Lighting On/Off: Lenovo laptops with keyboard backlit feature have a light icon shown on the Spacebar key Read more
  • Turning Samsung Keyboard Lighting On/Off: You can press Fn+F9 on Samsung laptops to turn the keyboard lighting on/off Read more

Turning HP Keyboard Lighting On/Off

Most of the HP laptops that come with a backlit keyboard have an icon showing three small horizontal squares with glow lines coming out from the left square. You will find this icon on F4, F5, F9 or F11 function key. Just press that key to control the backlighting. However, for some HP laptops, pressing the function key alone won’t work. You need to press Fn with the respective function key. 

Turning Dell Keyboard Lighting On/Off

Dell laptops also come with their own ways to control the keyboard backlighting. You can look for the glowing rectangle icon on the function keys and use the same to turn keyboard lighting on/off. The icon usually remains present on F6 or F10. Now, depending upon your model, you may have to press function key alone or with combination with Fn key. If you are using Dell XPS M1730 or any other similar Dell laptop and unable to find the backlit icon on the above function keys, check the right arrow (->) key of your keyboard. Some Dell laptops use Fn key plus the right arrow key to control the keyboard backlighting. 

Turning Asus Keyboard Lighting On/Off

On Asus laptops, you have to look for tiny glowing keyboard icon on function keys. Usually, this icon is displayed on F3 or F4 keys on the backlight supported keyboards. You can press Fn+F3 and Fn+F4 keys to decrease, increase the backlighting or turn it off.

Turning Mac Keyboard Lighting On/Off

Mac laptops come with a flat rectangle with glow lines icon on function keys to represent that these keys can be used to adjust the keyboard backlight. You will usually find this icon on F5 and F6 keys and use the same to decrease, increase or turn the keyboard backlight on/off. 

Apple also allows you to set the keyboard backlight to auto-adjust according to the lighting conditions. You can go to Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Keyboard and tick the checkbox for Adjust keyboard brightness in low light to enable this feature. 

Turning Lenovo Keyboard Lighting On/Off

Lenovo laptops with keyboard backlit feature have a light icon shown on the Spacebar key. You can press Fn+Spacebar keys to adjust the keyboard backlighting. Lenovo Thinkpad laptops come with a small LED mounted on the top of the screen and points down at the keyboard. You can control this LED light pressing the Fn+PageUp keys.

Turning Samsung Keyboard Lighting On/Off

You can press Fn+F9 on Samsung laptops to turn the keyboard lighting on/off. If you are using a Samsung notebook with Windows 10, you may need to visit Microsoft store to download and install Samsung Settings app. You can use the app to make sure keyboard backlighting is available is enabled or not.

Wrapping Up

I hope you have found what you are looking for. If you want to control keyboard backlit of any other laptop which we haven’t covered here, do let us know in the comments below. We will try to include them as well as soon as possible.

29 COMMENTS

  1. Hello Subham,
    Can you please tell me how to turn on the keyboard light. I had Windows 10 installed. The lap-top was reset and windows 8 could not be installed I was told. When I reboot the lap-top the keyboard comes on and stay for 2 seconds and then stays off.
    Regards.

  2. I had back lighting and now I don’t. tried F4/5/9/11 with and w/o the Fn and still nothing. can you suggest anything else? I have an Acer Swift3.

  3. Hello, I work nights and would love to have the keyboard lit up as I work. Unfortunately I have not been able to do so. Fn+F9 do not work. How do I type in Fn? is that a key in itself or do I do capital F release and do lowercase n, then the F9 key? Because I’ve done that and nothing works… it just scrolls the page down to this area. I have a Lenovo Yoga 7 Series laptop. Please help. I have also held down the spacebar key and / or tapped it on the left side where it shows a light symbol (like a sunrise). That doesn’t work either. What am I doing wrong?

  4. Acer Spin 5 pin 513-54

    I had a backlit keyboard now I do not have a backlit keyboard. It is supposed to be F8. Help appreciated please.

  5. Dell Latitiude 5480 – Fn with every combination listed and on the keyboard. I assumed it would be the Fn and the little blue moon which shares “insert” top right – Fn and the blue moon restart the computer.

    I know I have the option because I used to have it so I could type in the dark. It is so freaking frustrating they won’t just put the damn setting under “keyboard”!!!

  6. Is there anyway to change the back light color on the keyboard? I have a Dell Inspiron 7706. At night the keys are hard to see with the current color..

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