3 Best Ways to Fix Keyboard Backlight Not Working on Windows 10 and Windows 11

Try Basic Fixes

• Toggle the keyboard backlight using the hotkey: You can use a key combination to quickly enable or disable the keyboard backlight on your Windows 11 PC. However, the exact key combination may vary. If there is a backlight icon on the Space key, you can press Fn + Space to enable the backlighting. On some computers, you need to press Fn + F5 or Fn + F6.
• Increase the keyboard brightness: The keyboard backlight may be on already, but the brightness level is low. To increase the keyboard brightness, find a key with the illumination icon on top of it. Press that key with the Fn key to cycle through various brightness level options and see if that helps.

Fix 1: Check Settings in the Keyboard App

Some keyboards require proprietary software to enable, disable, and customize keyboard backlighting. For example, Lenovo computers come with the Lenovo Vantage app to enable or disable keyboard lights. If you have a Razer laptop or keyboard, you can use its Synapse app to customize the lighting effects for your keyboard.

If a dedicated keyboard app is available on your computer, you’ll need to go through the app’s settings to enable keyboard backlighting. You can check the keyboard backlight timeout while you’re at it.

Fix 2: Update Keyboard Drivers

Drivers on your computer help Windows communicate with your hardware. There’s a chance your keyboard’s backlight isn’t working because the keyboard driver is old or damaged. In that case, updating the keyboard driver should fix the problem.

Step 1: Click on the search icon from the taskbar, type in device manager, and select the first result that appears.

Step 2: Expand Keyboards, right-click on your keyboard, and select Update driver from the list.

From there, follow the on-screen prompts to finish updating the drivers.

Fix 3: Check If Keyboard Backlight Works in Safe Mode

As a last resort, you can boot Windows into Safe Mode and then try to enable the keyboard backlight. The idea is to determine whether a problematic third-party app or service causes the issue.

Step 1: Press the Windows key + R to open the Run dialog. Type msconfig in the box and press Enter.

Step 2: Under the Boot tab, tick the Safe boot option. Then, click Apply followed by OK.

Step 3: Save all your work, and then select Restart to boot Windows in Safe Mode.

If the keyboard light works fine in Safe Mode, it’s probably some app or service running in the background that’s causing trouble. Try removing some of your recently installed apps and programs to see if that helps. Alternatively, you can perform a system restore to undo any changes that may have caused the keyboard backlight to stop working.