Turn off the lights on your WiFi router
The WiFi is meant to be on all the time — and when it's not you know.
You know because the inifinte flow of contextless videos on your screen turns off, and you are forced to interact with your friends and family on the material plane.
You don't need a light to tell you the WiFi is on — because it's always on — and when it's off you notice. The only useful thing the lights do is tell you why it isn't working.
Luckily, many WiFi routers allow you to alter the settings so the lights only turn on when there's something wrong — preventing unwanted visual clutter, and a small amount of electricity.1
How to turn off the WiFi router lights
Connect to your WiFi router.
Navigate to your WiFi router settings page.
Most routers have settings you can access from your web browser by typing either192.168.1.1or192.168.1.0. If neither of those work, there should be a URL written somewhere on the router.Enter the admin username and password.
This should be written on the router somewhere — it is not the same as your WiFi name password.Find the LED settings and switch them off.
This step is different for different routers. Not all WiFi routers will have the same flexibility — but many will have at least some way to turn off some of the lights.2
Footnotes
- 1
Based on this calculation for wattage:
3V * 20mA = 0.06Wtimes the number of hours in the year gets you525.6Whwhich in 2023 saves you between$0.05and$0.20a year depending on where you are in the world. - 2
For instance the Netgear Nighthawk has flashing lights on all the time! Which is probably why they give it that cool name — it keeps you up all night!
They do allow you to turn these off in the advanced settings.
Many routers have no option to turn the lights off and that's just lazy and not okay.