Keyboard Key Backlighting - Lenovo Thinkpad E16 Gen2

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1

Hello,

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad E16 Gen 2 laptop.

I’m having a problem where the keyboard backlight always turns off after a few minutes.

As soon as I adjust the keyboard brightness in the Power Management section of the KDE Plasma Settings, the backlight comes back on for a few minutes, but then turns off again.
In all power modes, I have the keyboard brightness set to 100%.

I mostly use my notebook at night when it’s dark, so I really need the keyboard backlight :slight_smile:

Right now, I’m using an autostart script:

echo 2 | pkexec tee /sys/class/leds/tpacpi::kbd_backlight/brightness >/dev/null

This works, but of course I’m prompted for the root password every time I log in.

Is there a better, persistent way to keep the keyboard backlight on permanently?

Thank you very much
Best regards,
Roman

2

Is there a timeout for keyboard backlight in BIOS? There is on my Dell.

3

I’d first check the firmware setting, as suggested, because some ThinkPads have their own timeout. For avoiding the login prompt, don’t run pkexec from autostart; make it a tiny root-owned systemd service instead, and optionally also run it after resume. For example set /sys/class/leds/tpacpi::kbd_backlight/brightness from an oneshot service. If it still turns off a few minutes later, then something else is actively changing it, so I’d watch it with watch -n1 cat /sys/class/leds/tpacpi::kbd_backlight/brightness while testing KDE power settings.