22

I would like to turn off the leds of my Raspberry Pi.

I tried modifying the file echo none >/sys/class/leds/led0/trigger but nothing changed.

Is this possible?

Jason Whitehorn
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Mauro Midolo
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  • You can disable the red power led, if thats what you mean? See here: http://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2013/05/how-to-disable-the-red-led-on-the-pi-camera-module/ –  Nov 21 '14 at 11:47

6 Answers6

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RaspberryMediaCenter:/sys/class/leds # echo 0 >/sys/class/leds/led1/brightness
RaspberryMediaCenter:/sys/class/leds # echo 0 >/sys/class/leds/led0/brightness

led0 green one

led1 red one

pfnuesel
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Salvo Neutron
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25

According to the RaspberryPi forums: 

echo 1 >/sys/class/leds/led0/brightness #Turn on
echo 0 >/sys/class/leds/led0/brightness #Turn off
Though I think some kernel hacking may be involved to control all of them, I believe this only works with the OK LED.
12

It's 2022, and the answer today is:

The documentation is located here, but it may or may not be up to date:

  • on your local file system: /boot/overlays/README
  • online at GitHub: the README file

The README is a rather choppy document, but you can find enough to get started. The parameters of interest are act_led_*, and pwr_led_*. There are three device tree parameters (dtparam) for both act_led and pwr_led: _trigger, _activelow and _gpio, but the documentation doesn't mention all possible values for them. Through guesswork, I learned the following values will turn the activity/green and power/red LEDs OFF:

To turn both act_led and pwr_led OFF, add these two lines to the file /boot/config.txt, and then reboot:

dtparam=act_led_trigger=none
dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=none

However:

Changes made on Aug 8, 2022 to the Raspberry Pi's proprietary closed-source firmware have rendered the above configuration ineffective on some models of RPi:

  • Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+
  • Raspberry Pi 4 Model B
  • Raspberry Pi 400
  • Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4

For these models, with firmware versions issued since Aug. 8, 2022, the following configuration is needed to extinguish the Red Power LED (pwr_led):

dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=default-on   # The default
dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=off

There are also parameters for extinguishing the Ethernet LEDs also, but they only work for the 3B+ & 4B models: eth_led0 & eth_led1. Fortunately, the documentation does enumerate a set of values for the 3B+ and the 4B.

UPDATE, 3/22/22: Additional details are now posted on GitHub

UPDATE, 8/27/22: A recent software/firmware change by The RPi Organization seems to have broken the device tree configuration (dtparam) that disabled the Red Power LED. A bug report was filed on 2022/08/21. I won't attempt to characterize the maintainer's responses; you may review them & draw your own conclusions.

As of now, I feel that the answer to the OP's question is that "it depends on the Raspberry Pi model". I've edited my answer above based on the latest information, but this saga will likely have more episodes! FWIW, the sysfs interface - deprecated ~ 2 years ago - still seems to be working if the correct file & value are used; the details are presented in another Q&A on the same subject.

UPDATE, 12/27/22:

Any further updates to this answer will be posted to this GitHub repo.

  • Thank you for this answer Seamus! Countless other places online only repeat methods that no longer works for my case. But setting dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=default-on # The default dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=off In my /boot/config.txt and rebooting worked (raspberry pi 4b) – kschnack Sep 29 '22 at 10:26
  • @kschnack: Glad to hear it helped. Feel free to upvote :) –  Sep 30 '22 at 07:12
  • Well of course! Done ;) – kschnack Oct 01 '22 at 15:32
  • For the Raspberry Pi 400 you can use `/sys/class/leds/PWR/brightness` (under Raspbian 11 Bullseye). – rolandog Jun 12 '23 at 11:54
5

On the Pi you can control the 2 Leds (red and green) by editing the files located under:

/sys/class/leds/led[num]

For example to turn off the usual blinking of the green led when the Pi is accessing the sd card, you can run (as admin):

echo none > /sys/class/leds/led0/trigger

And to turn on or off one led, you can change the status of the brightness file (as admin):

echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/led0/brightness     # turn on
echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/led0/brightness     # turn off

This is my very inelegant workaround in Python to actually control the status:

import time
import os

# turn off the default trigger of the green LED
os.system("sudo bash -c \"echo none > /sys/class/leds/led0/trigger\"")

# turn on the green LED
os.system("sudo bash -c \"echo 1 > /sys/class/leds/led0/brightness\"")

# keep it on 5 seconds
time.sleep(5)

# turn off the green LED on PI
os.system("sudo bash -c \"echo 0 > /sys/class/leds/led0/brightness\"")
Filippo Ferraris
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Depending on which LED you are talking about, it looks like it is not possible.

For more information, read How can I turn the lights off on my pi? (and that's also a good place to ask RPi questions)

Community
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Ben Voigt
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I realize that this is an old question. But, it was the first in the Google results for me, and it didn't work for my Raspberry Pi2 B+. For anyone else like me finding this now, the techniques at http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blogs/jeff-geerling/controlling-pwr-act-leds-raspberry-pi did work.

skypanther
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