How to turn off backlighting on soft-keys?

[hichhiker]

Ok, I am a long time Droid drooler, recent convert with an Incredible

I have been able to deal with a lot of Droid's rougher edges, but one that is really getting to me is a particularly simple yet annoying one - namely I want the ability to turn off back-lighting of the soft-keys (home/menu/back/search).

With the introduction of Kindle for Android, I can again read books on my phone late at night without disturbing the wife, but while Kindle app has great controls over brightness of screen and theme (sepia or black works great at night), the soft keys are so damn bright, it makes it really difficult to read the dim screen.

I did some Googling, and got a range of answers that are irrelevant (about the light sensor) or that say that its impossible (which I know is not true, since at the very least the clock app controls it in its night mode). I did come across another post that pointed me to "Brightness.apk.zip" util, which I downloaded and installed. That does seems like the right thing (has a button named "turn keylight off") but none of the operations on that app work. I am not sure if the app requires me to root the phone, or if it is designed for a different OS/phone. I would like to hold off rooting my phone until I know I need it for sure.

Any help would be appreciated, even if it is in a form of telling me how to do this from code - I am willing to try to write some code, I already written a patch for K9.

Thanks,

-HH

 

[jntdroid]

well, on the droid, you had to be rooted to get them off... don't know for sure on the incredible, but i would imagine it's similar since it appears to be controlled by the OS... I say that b/c this functionality comes default (finally!) with 2.2

 

[jcolt]

Ok, I am a long time Droid drooler, recent convert with an Incredible

I have been able to deal with a lot of Droid's rougher edges, but one that is really getting to me is a particularly simple yet annoying one - namely I want the ability to turn off back-lighting of the soft-keys (home/menu/back/search).

With the introduction of Kindle for Android, I can again read books on my phone late at night without disturbing the wife, but while Kindle app has great controls over brightness of screen and theme (sepia or black works great at night), the soft keys are so damn bright, it makes it really difficult to read the dim screen.

I did some Googling, and got a range of answers that are irrelevant (about the light sensor) or that say that its impossible (which I know is not true, since at the very least the clock app controls it in its night mode). I did come across another post that pointed me to "Brightness.apk.zip" util, which I downloaded and installed. That does seems like the right thing (has a button named "turn keylight off") but none of the operations on that app work. I am not sure if the app requires me to root the phone, or if it is designed for a different OS/phone. I would like to hold off rooting my phone until I know I need it for sure.

Any help would be appreciated, even if it is in a form of telling me how to do this from code - I am willing to try to write some code, I already written a patch for K9.

Thanks,

-HH

I just asked this question of the forum two days ago for the Driod. There is a free market app called LEDs Hack which on a rooted Droid kills the backlight for the soft keys below the screen.

 

[hichhiker]

well, on the droid, you had to be rooted to get them off... don't know for sure on the incredible, but i would imagine it's similar since it appears to be controlled by the OS... I say that b/c this functionality comes default (finally!) with 2.2

Thanks for quick answer. It sounds like I need to either root the phone or wait for 2.2, or look for a 2.2 ROM for Incredible. Any known stable 2.2 ROMs for Incredible (if I am not straying to far off-topic?)

Thanks again

-HH

 

[CaptainTaco]

Ok, I am a long time Droid drooler, recent convert with an Incredible

I have been able to deal with a lot of Droid's rougher edges, but one that is really getting to me is a particularly simple yet annoying one - namely I want the ability to turn off back-lighting of the soft-keys (home/menu/back/search).

With the introduction of Kindle for Android, I can again read books on my phone late at night without disturbing the wife, but while Kindle app has great controls over brightness of screen and theme (sepia or black works great at night), the soft keys are so damn bright, it makes it really difficult to read the dim screen.

I did some Googling, and got a range of answers that are irrelevant (about the light sensor) or that say that its impossible (which I know is not true, since at the very least the clock app controls it in its night mode). I did come across another post that pointed me to "Brightness.apk.zip" util, which I downloaded and installed. That does seems like the right thing (has a button named "turn keylight off") but none of the operations on that app work. I am not sure if the app requires me to root the phone, or if it is designed for a different OS/phone. I would like to hold off rooting my phone until I know I need it for sure.

Any help would be appreciated, even if it is in a form of telling me how to do this from code - I am willing to try to write some code, I already written a patch for K9.

Thanks,

-HH

I just asked this question of the forum two days ago for the Driod. There is a free market app called LEDs Hack which on a rooted Droid kills the backlight for the soft keys below the screen.

Excellent, that app worked wonderfully on my rooted incredible. I've been searching for something that disabled those for a long while now. What they should have done is included a dimming feature for them, or just had them be less bright... Let's face it, if you needed the LED's to see the 4 buttons, it's dark out... so dark that you can't see the white printing on the phone... and if that's the case... you DO NOT need a light bright enough to light the room just to see those buttons...


As for the "is there a stable 2.2 ROM for the Incredible yet" question, no, as a matter of fact, there isn't a 2.2 ROM for the incredible period, Koush was working on one, but has yet to release anything to the public as it is "very buggy" at the moment.

 

[malpert]

what does "rooted "mean?

thank you.. does this have to do with making the droidx into a hotspot?