Ambient light sensor control of keyboard and screen brightness in Linux
Details
- External ID
- 45789431
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Ambient
- Website domain
- github.com
- Launched
- Nov. 2, 2025
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 26
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.7336244541484717
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
I have always wanted cool features in Linux because I use it day to day as my OS. I have always wanted to implement this feature and do it properly: one that automatically adjusts keyboard and LCD backlights using data from the Ambient Light Sensor.I enjoy low-level programming a lot. I delved into writing this program in C. It came out well and worked seamlessly on my device. Currently, it only works for keyboard lights. I designed it in a way that the support for LCD will come in seamlessly in the future.But, in the real world, people have different kinds of devices. And I made sure to follow the iio implementation on the kernel through sysfs. I would like feedback. :)
Enrichment
- Theme
- custom keyboards and input controllers
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- ambient light control for linux keyboards and screens
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
No This requires low-level Linux systems programming, interacting directly with kernel driver interfaces (sysfs/iio), hardware ACPI ambient light sensors, and hardware backlight controllers without crashing the display daemon.
What it would actually take: The solution requires writing a low-level C or Rust daemon that interfaces with the Linux Industrial I/O (IIO) subsystem or ACPI methods to read ambient light sensor (ALS) raw lux data. It must implement hysteresis and smoothing algorithms to prevent brightness flicker and communicate with /sys/class/backlight devices across varying vendor drivers (Intel, AMD, Nvidia, vendor-specific keyboard lights). This demands kernel interfaces knowledge, device driver familiarity, and hardware-level testing across diverse PC architectures.
Discussion
2 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: iio-sensor-proxy, GNOME auto-brightness feature
Concerns raised: GNOME implementation leaves much to be desired and hasn't improved despite rework attempts, Different logic needed for display vs keyboard backlighting
Feature requests: Inverse brightness control for keyboard lights (on in dark, off in lit environments), Better ambient light sensor integration
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 46 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #15 of 47 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Looks like the first mover among its competitors.
- Screen Bright · ph · 2026-09-18 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- Backlit Keyboard API for Python · hn · 2026-04-19 · 27 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- Brightness Control · ph · 2026-09-14 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- Night Light & Sleep Sounds · ph · 2026-09-26 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- Edgy · hn · 2026-09-02 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.39
- Flashlight: Android app that lets you control torch brightness · hn · 2026-01-15 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.39
- okeylitctl · github · 2026-09-26 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.38
- LCDGlance · ph · 2026-09-24 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.37
Other launches for this product
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a dev tools tool for Sales yet.