How to disable Macbook keyboard backlight

Question

How do I disable the keyboard backlight, by turning it completely off, on a Macbook in 12.04?

Whenever I reboot, Ubuntu sets the backlight to 100% brightness, and frustratingly the new function keys no longer support being held down, so I have to press the dim key about 50 times to turn off the backlight.

Answer 1

Make the keyboard backlight device writable by everyone:

sudo chmod 777 /sys/class/leds/smc::kbd_backlight/brightness

Then, in your ~/.bash_aliases, add:

echo 0 | tee -a /sys/class/leds/smc::kbd_backlight/brightness

Alternatively, if you want the backlight to be disabled for all users, then add that line instead to /etc/profile.d/custom.sh.

The only caveat I've noticed is that unlocking your screen occassionally appears to reset the backlight to full brightness. Unfortunately, I don't know what's causing this.

Answer 2

is there a settings in the OS itself when you can control, turn on and off the back-light for your keyboard, if not the light will always be on, and if it does turn it off by there or turn the brightness to 0% and restart the Macbook and it should be o.k. or if that doesn't work install XChat and join the page that the topic is about and ask the more better professional about the matter. but i think you need to get the software to do so....