Turn off the LEDs of the Raspberry Pi

Not everyone likes lights, so here’s the option to leave the Raspberry Pi completely in the dark, disabling the power, activity and ethernet LEDs.

Power off your Umbrel under Settings > Shutdown, and remove the SD card.

Then, put the SD card into your computer, you should see it show up in your file manager with the name boot.

Open a file named config.txt, where you must add these lines at the end:

# Disable the ACT LED.
dtparam=act_led_trigger=none
dtparam=act_led_activelow=off
# Disable the PWR LED.
dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=none
dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=off
# Disable ethernet port LEDs
dtparam=eth_led0=4
dtparam=eth_led1=4
6 Likes

There’s no need to shutdown the Pi and insert the SD card in your PC. It can be done over SSH and configuring config.txt

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

enter the lines above then save
Ctrl+X, Y, return
then restart umbrel through the web UI.

8 Likes

Very useful @Aydo, thanks!

1 Like

Had to sudo reboot, but this worked! Sweet. Stealth mode!

/necropost on

Yes, thanks very much @Aydo and @ibertario - this is a very neat trick…but I can’t get mine to work.

I’ve edited the config.txt file several times now with nano, and I can see the successive changes I’ve made, but after several software- and hardware reboots, I still have the blinking Christmas tree Umbrel with all of the LEDs lit up / flashing strong.

Any ideas why it’s not working? Here is the relevant section of the config.txt file with the new additions:

> # Disable the ACT LED.
> dtparam=act_led_trigger=none
> dtparam=act_led_activelow=off
> 
> # Disable the PWR LED.
> # dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=none
> # dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=off
> 
> # Disable ethernet port LEDs
> dtparam=eth_led0=4
> dtparam=eth_led1=4
> 
> # Disable WiFi
> # dtoverlay=disable-wifi
> 
> # Disable Bluetooth
> dtoverlay=disable-bt

Hello,

Do you have a Pi 4? I tried your settings on my Pi 4 (uncommented both PWR LED as well) and they work. All lights were off. My settings were:

[pi4]
#Disable the ACT LED.
dtparam=act_led_trigger=none
dtparam=act_led_activelow=off

#Disable the PWR LED.
dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=none
dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=off

#Disable ethernet port LEDs
dtparam=eth_led0=4
dtparam=eth_led1=4

1 Like

Sorry - yes - Pi 4 B with 8GB RAM, 1TB drive all in a Geekworm NASPI enclosure that uses their two boards. https://geekworm.com/products/geekworm-naspi-2-5-sata-hdd-ssd-kit-for-raspberry-pi-4-model-b

Perhaps that’s the problem - the LEDs are being powered by the Geekworm auxiliary boards? Apologies - this is my first ever RPi, and I’ve pretty much only ever had it in this enclosure

fixed using a small piece of tape to hide them.

1 Like

Don’t know who will need this but after update my old config won’t work.

Seems to me it’s because of this: dtparam settings for power led no longer function since upgrade to `5.15.56-v7+ #1575`, RPi 3B+ · Issue #1742 · raspberrypi/firmware · GitHub

New config that worked for me is this one:

#Power LED off
dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=default-on
dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=off
#Activity LED off
dtparam=act_led_trigger=none
dtparam=act_led_activelow=off
#Turn off Ethernet ACT LED
dtparam=eth_led0=4
#Turn off Ethernet LNK LED
dtparam=eth_led1=4

(Activity LED is for status if problem with SDRAM, kernel file state, boot, halt and if all OK it means either SD connected or R/W in process on it - could be usefull sometimes…)