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When I go to sleep at night, the two green lights (emitting from both sides of the MagSafe connector of my 13" MacBook Air's power adaptor) light up my whole room.

How do I turn these off?

I currently just cover it with clothes, but doing so is difficult & ineffective because I keep my laptop on a stand. Maybe I can construct a sort of mini sleeve that goes around the connector to cover the light.

I don't want to disconnect it because I don't shut it down and prefer to only discharge it once/month for optimum battery health. I guess I could shut it down every night and then remove the power cord.

I prefer the iPhone charger because it doesn't emit any light.

ma11hew28
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  • If you don't shut the MacBook Air down, then doesn't the big glowing white Apple logo light up the room a whole lot more than the little green LEDs on the MagSafe connector? – Mike Scott Nov 13 '14 at 16:16
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    Electrical tape? Paint? Fingernail Polish? Doesn't sound like you can, nor want to mess with figuring out a way to make it stay off by messing with the magsafe (http://www.righto.com/2013/06/teardown-and-exploration-of-magsafe.html) – panhandel Nov 13 '14 at 16:17
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    Electrical tape is probably the best way. – cpast Nov 13 '14 at 17:40
  • possible duplicate of [Disable power LED blinks during Vista hybrid sleep?](http://superuser.com/questions/45990/disable-power-led-blinks-during-vista-hybrid-sleep), [How to disable LEDs on laptop Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi-3525](http://superuser.com/questions/106586/how-to-disable-leds-on-laptop-fujitsu-siemens-amilo-pi-3525) – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Nov 13 '14 at 20:03
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    Apple doesn't want you to sleep. They want you to stay up and stare at your mac while _it_ sleeps – Andreas Feb 14 '15 at 01:28
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    I just layered a piece of blue painters tape over mine, the light still comes through but it's muted a bit :(. I guess these engineers never bothered developing this stuff in the dark to see how much of a distraction it is--that little bright light is such a thief and irritant to my visual focus on the screen. It's a source of eye strain for me. What they should have done is oriented it if they were so insistent about it--light on one side, all metal on the other. This is one of those things where you wonder who even asked for this feature? – jxramos Mar 03 '23 at 06:26

3 Answers3

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Unfortunately there is no way of doing this. They are controlled by a tiny chip that is located in the tip of the plug that controls the status LED.

Vdub
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You may cover the LEDs with LightDims stickers, they have a kind that dims the light by 80-90% (silver-aluminum color, like the charger) that can also allow you to still see the LED color, but not to get blind from it (see picture).

If you really want, they also have a kind that blocks 100% of the light (but it's only in black color).

It seems like it shows the dimming difference better in non-dark image, but believe me that as a sensitive person to lights, this is doing a great job in a dark room. Demonstration

Ido
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Charge your Mac to 50 percent. Cut a thin piece of tape and put it over the middle pin on the MagSafe charger. For safety, make sure the other pins stay completely uncovered.

The computer uses the middle pin to retrieve the charger’s serial number and wattage over the 1-Wire protocol — without this information, your Mac will power itself from the charger, but it won’t charge the battery.

enter image description here

Source: http://kevinchen.co/blog/magsafe-disable-charging/

fixer1234
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Patrick Saguinsin
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    Can you expand the answer? If the link breaks your answer as it stands alone lacks detail. – suspectus Aug 20 '15 at 12:15
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    -1 This does not address the issue of turning off the MagSafe light on the adapter itself. Not a hack to force the MacBook to run off of AC without charging. – Giacomo1968 Sep 14 '22 at 14:42