The Unnecessary Lighting Control
macOS offers granular control over your hardware, and one of the options available in the Control Center settings is the ability to place a “Keyboard Brightness” icon directly in your menu bar. Clicking this icon (which looks like a small line with rays emanating from it) reveals a slider that allows you to manually adjust the backlight intensity of your MacBook’s built-in keyboard.
However, for the vast majority of Mac users, this menu bar icon is completely unnecessary. Modern MacBooks handle keyboard backlighting automatically using ambient light sensors, adjusting the illumination perfectly based on the room’s brightness. If you do need to override the automatic setting, it is significantly faster to use the dedicated physical keyboard brightness keys (typically F5 and F6, or the Touch Bar slider) rather than clicking a tiny icon on the screen. If you want to keep your menu bar clean and free of redundant controls, you should disable it.
How to Hide the Keyboard Brightness Icon
You can remove this specific control module via the Control Center preferences.
- Click the Apple Logo in the top-left corner of your screen and select System Settings… (or System Preferences).
- In the left-hand sidebar, click on Control Center.
- In the right-hand pane, scroll down past the default modules to the section labelled Other Modules.
- Locate the Keyboard Brightness option.
- Next to Keyboard Brightness, click the toggle switch to turn it Off (or, on older versions, change the dropdown to “Don’t Show in Menu Bar”).
The keyboard illumination icon will immediately vanish from your menu bar. Your Mac will continue to adjust the backlight automatically, and you can still use your physical F-keys for manual overrides.