Keyboard Backlight is not working on Linux

You bought an awesome backlit keyboard. Maybe an expensive one. And you’re a Linux fan, and that for you use Linux distro as your main OS. Distros like Ubuntu, Kali Linux, Mint, Arch, Garuda, Manjaro, and others.

You are super happy and you unbox your new backlit keyboard and you plugged it with your laptop or pc. The backlit keyboard is working very well. But, wait….the backlight is not working! You thought that it was for any driver or the backlight is damaged.

But, it’s not actually. Those expensive (or non-expensive) backlit keyboards are made for a Windows system. They don’t want you to use that on a Linux system. And, for that, the backlight is not working.

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But, that’s not mean that the backlight is not going to work on a Linux machine. You can do that by using just a single line of command.

How to turn on the keyboard backlight on Linux?

1. Open your terminal

First, you have to open your terminal. Use ctrl + alt + t to open the terminal or you can do that with other regular methods.

2. Use the command

Use xset led 3 this single command to turn on the keyboard backlight.

You don’t need sudo access. Just type the command on the terminal or copy and paste the command. And at the last press enter. Your keyboard backlight now should be turned on.

So, this is the whole process and you’re welcome. If the method is not working for your keyboard then let me know that in the comment section.

I tried this method on lots of keyboards and it’s worked well. So, it needs to work for you also.