Turning off RGB automatically on Linux

Posted: 2026-09-18

Many computers light up like christmas trees with RGB LEDs, they stick these things on everything and on Linux it may not be obvious how to turn this visual nuisance off.

How to turn this visual nuisance off:

  1. Install openrgb with apt-get or pacman or whatever.

  2. Verify that openrgb -m off turns off the lights.

  3. Create a file /etc/systemd/system/openrgb-off.service containing

[Unit]
Description=Leave the x-mas tree aesthetics in CP2077 please
After=multi-user.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/openrgb -m off
RemainAfterExit=yes

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
  1. Enable the .service
$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ sudo systemctl enable --now openrgb-off.service

System should now disable LEDs on startup.