I'm running Mint 18.1 KDE on a 2012 MacBook Pro and would love a setting allowing the keyboard to stay lit for, say 15s of inactivity (no keyboard or mouse/trackpad input) and then turn off. Thanks :D
I agree. Especially from a perspective of saving power, this is very important. I don't know if KDE is the right place to solve this, but, considering it is able to control the brightness, I figured it might be worth a try.
When you configure the screen to dim (or turn off) after a certain time of inactivity the keyboard backlight will turn off with it, unless the keyboard brightness controls don't work at which point we cannot do anything about it.
Yes, that does work. However, I think this request if about the keyboard backlight turning off independently of the screen after a much shorter time.
But why?
^^ Yes, why? If this is for energy savings, can you quantify the actual savings? My sense is that keyboard backlights are very small users of energy--but I could be wrong! However I'd like to see some data if energy savings is the reason.
Yes, the purpose is saving energy. I always just assumed it was using a lot of power, but now that you mention it, I'm not so sure anymore. I will report back when I find concrete data.
I think that it's good to have an ability to control keyboard backlight auto-dimming independently from screen auto-dimming. Not even for power saving purposes. Some applications prevent screen dimming, like watching video. But at the same time you don't need keyboard backlight when you watch a video, it could even be distracting in a dark environment. I think this commit https://invent.kde.org/arrowdodger/powerdevil/-/commit/5ec53c84a59357782c34cda7ca7dde8938491cbb might be solving this, but it seems no merge request was ever opened for it.
FWIW I've measured 1-2 watts of power from the backlight (depending on its brightness) which does make a difference when on battery, so I think this does make sense.
Splitting out the keyboard backlight into a separate action would also enable us to dim the keyboard while keeping the screen on, like when a video player forces the screen on, you probably still want the keyboard backlight to turn off as to not be distracting.
(In reply to Kai Uwe Broulik from comment #9) > Splitting out the keyboard backlight into a separate action would also > enable us to dim the keyboard while keeping the screen on, like when a video > player forces the screen on, you probably still want the keyboard backlight > to turn off as to not be distracting. Yes, exactly the case that I have. Keyboard backlight is too bright on my laptop, and when watching a video in a dark room I have to turn it off manually.