Is there anyway I can control keyboard's backlight? In Windows 10 in general or for my Dell Latitude 7290 in particular?
My Dell has a great keyboard's backlight feature, but it turns it off after only 10 seconds since last key is pressed.
10-15 seconds is by far too short for me. It causes a terrible eye discomfort, when using computer in darkness. If only I pause typing for a short moment, everything goes black. And once I resume typing, I am hit with lights.
I cannot verify this right now, but I am pretty much sure that my Lenovo notebook turns off keyboard backlight after at least 30 seconds, if not 60 seconds after last key was pressed. And such eye effect / problem does not occur.
My current research:
- I cannot control this via keyboard's hardware -- Fn+F10 only controls whether backlight is turned off or the level of intensity, but not the auto-turn off timer.
- I found nothing in Windows 10's keyboard configuration corresponding to backlight.
- I have no Dell-related software installed on my laptop. If fact, the only Dell-related software that I can find when I type "Dell" in Start Menu is Dell Command Update that, again, has nothing either for backlight of keyboard or for the laptop configuration in general -- it only updates drivers.
Is there any way I can control this?
31 Answer
According to Latitude 7290's user manual, you must dig your way out to the BIOS. To do this, either press F2 and hold it or key pressing it quickly until you see BIOS loading screen. The window to enter BIOS on a Dell is short and you can easily miss it.
When in BIOS, go to Settings > System Configuration and adjust values of:
- Keyboard Backlight Timeout on AC
- Keyboard Backlight Timeout on Battery
options to suit your needs.
Both option's default value is 10 seconds.
Setting this value to Never will allow you to have keyboard enlighten all the time. Even with this setting you will be, however, able to permanently turn it off (and on again) using Fn+F10 keyboard shortcut.
For more information see user manual.
