Features
- Control the keyboard backlight
- Freely adjust the keyboard brightness using slider
- Automatically control the keyboard light based on the ambient light sensor data
- Customize light sensor sensitivity
Whats new in v0.3 beta
- Easier setup: Eliminated giveio driver dependency, using inpout32 instead. The hardware interface driver is installed by the application at the fist time launch.
Whats new in v0.2 beta
- Fixed crash occurring after hibernation
- Accidentally covering one of the sensors will not disable the backlight.
- Lazy reaction on ambient light changes, ignoring temporary oversaturation of the light sensors. Abrupt temporary light changes will not cause keyboard backlight to go off and on.
- Motion sensor measurements are displayed correctly now.
Download
Download the latest version v0.3 beta
Old releases:
Download the MacBook tray tools zip archive, unpack it and carefully follow the installation instructions below.
What is it?
If you happened to be a happy MacBook / MacBook Pro owner running Windows with Bootcamp,
you surely felt annoyed of current lack of driver support for some neat features offered by this beautiful piece of hardware. For example the keyboard backlight and automatic brightness adjustment based on environment light is completely lacking any drivers.
How long would it take for Apple to release the complete set of drivers and how well the Apple hardware will be supported under Windows compared to Mac OS X, nobody can say for sure. The recent release of Bootcamp did not include this support.
I put together a small tray resident application which lets you activate and control the keyboard light, it also accesses the light sensors to resemble the automatic light adjustment to the environment light as you know it fromMac OS X.
This application is a freeware, feel free to download and use it. The application comes with no guarantee, use it on your own risk.
I would like to thank Nicolas Boichat (www.boichat.ch) and Niklas Jakob for providing the initial Apple SMC I/O code.
The application incorporates a inpout32 i/o driver developed by http://www.logix4u.net
Discuss it
Discuss the tool on the official onmac.net forum thread
Installation
(If you are upgrading an older MacBook Tray Tools version, you may want to
uninstall the GIVEIO driver first. Start the loaddrv.exe, specify path to giveio.sys driver and press Stop then Uninstall.)
1. Copy the MacBookTrayTools.exe to any location you find appropriate, for example to "C:\Program Files\MacBook Tray tools\"
2. Create a shortcut in your Startup group to make sure the app is loaded at the next windows restart.
3. Launch the tray tools. If you're running the tool first time, it will install the required i/o driver.
Icon will appear in your tray, right click it to see the available options. By default the tool is configured to automatically adjust the light based on ambient light sensor data.
Known Issues
- Too bright LCD may prevent the keyboard backlight from turning on. Raise the thresholds in the configuration to fix the problem.
- Sometimes sensors seem to "get used" to the darker environment and start report higher light levels. Exposing the sensors to the light recalibrates them.
Enjoy!
- Dmitri