I regularly take nail polish and paint over these infernal LEDs in layers until they are at a brightness that I find acceptable. Red are not so bad, but blue LEDs area nightmare. I have a cheap Chinese headlamp were the blue battery indicator is brighter than the red led for illumination, and the blue reflects off my glasses into my eyes.

I got rid of my alarm clock because the led screen was too bright. My phone charger has a bright blue light on it so I have to cover that up to sleep. I almost want to set up my bedroom with no electronics at all but I don't think my wife would go for it

What drives me nuts is all of the light fixtures that have Integrated LED bulbs in them.

They make regular LED bulbs to put into fixtures, there's no reason for the stupid integrated LEDs. LED bulbs give you the option of choosing brightness and tone.

And sure, integrated bulbs may be rated to last 20 years, but the circuitry and drivers controlling those bulbs are not. You'll be lucky to get 5 years out of it, and then you have to toss the whole thing away and buy a new one and install it again.

Back in 2011, I picked up and repaired a busted USB-SATA HDD adapter, and it had the most blinding bright white status light on it.

What did I do? I literally cut that end of the board off with a hacksaw (then carefully filed away stray copper to avoid any shorts). Then I installed a 12 volt receptacle and 16v filter capacitor in its place to be able to power up desktop drives if I want.

Screw them blinding lights though! 👍

Man, that reminds me of an art installation that I saw many years ago, where an artist set up a bunch of home electronics in a completely dark room so that their LED lights looked like star constellations.

It was kinda beautiful and yet a reminder about all the "light pollution" we get from these devices, basically what you are talking about.

I tried to look up the name of the artist and that art installation, but couldn't find it.

I stayed in a motel recently that had a kitchenette with a mini fridge in the same room as the bed. You can tell management spent extra for this fridge too, since it had a temperature readout and a see-through door. But by god, that bright blue LED temperature display lit up the entire room and kept me up all night. I tried to cover it with some paper, but that only made it spread further. A couple socks draped over the top eventually did the trick.

I have to agree with you. I have tape over numerous items in my bedroom that would otherwise cause too much light at night.

For what it's worth, I have a fan that lets you turn off the LED lights, even from the remote control for the fan. /shrug

From an electronic tech perspective... I've been replacing the LEDs in anything that annoys me with a dull red and a resistor valued to keep it barely visible. It's a tad more eloquent than tape. Most things don't need a led at all. I'd love to see manufacturers switch to an e paper solution with a simple "on" or "off" displayed. And I hate standby led's.

My first PC was cathodes and LED, every device ive ever owne since has been No external lights. if they do ill pull the led and plug the gap or diesel duty a sharpie to dim them pretty good to just ambient level.i feel u