Use Light Manager For Complete Control Over Your Notification Light

Use Light Manager for Complete Control Over Your Notification Light

BY GreenBot Staff

GreenBot Staff

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All Articles by GreenBot Staff

Published 17 Mar 2014

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Many Android devices have notification lights, small LEDs that blink to indicate missed calls, new text messages, and battery status. These lights are excellent, silent unobtrusive to those around you. Unlike ring tones and vibration patterns, color-coded to denote different types of notifications. For example, a hastily blinking red light usually means your phone is about to die. Think of how helpful these lights would be if you could harness the LED. Then force it to blink custom colors for different apps, contacts, and system statuses. Super helpful, right? Awesome, you’re in luck because you can customize your handset’s notification light with a free app called Light Manager.

Light Manager: For Managing Lights

There are several light management apps out there. Still, Light Manager is my favorite because it’s free, easy to use, and light on system resources. Light Flow, another popular LED management app, is almost three times the size of Light Manager. It tends to drain your device’s battery. Getting started with Light Manager is simple; download, install, and open the app. Then you can begin customizing your notification lights. The app can look overwhelming initially, but its simple black-and-white menu is pretty straightforward. At the top, you’ll see the app’s settings menu:

Light Manager 1 — Light Manager settings are straightforward easy to understand.

Here, you can choose the operating mode. Normal, which flashes only one color notification light at a time, or Alternating, which cycles through colors, if there are multiple notification lights. Light Flow has a similar feature. But its cycles take about 12 seconds if you’re using the free version and 2.5 seconds for the paid version. You can also configure advanced settings in the menu, such as adjusting LED brightness and redefining colors, via hex code.

Light Manager 2 — LED too bright at night? Good thing you can tweak the brightness!

Customise Notifications

Below the initial settings menu is the meat of the app, LED Setting for Notification. Here, you’ll see a list of app functions for which you can set custom notification lights. Including missed calls, text messages, email, Facebook, and Twitter.

Light Manager 3 — Choosing colors for individual types of notifications.

To setup up, a custom notification light, tap an app or service to open its notification menu. Here you can enable the LED, choose a flash rate between 1 to 5 seconds. Pick a custom color, choose a preset or enter your hex code. And test the notification light to see what it looks like. You can add custom notification lights for different contacts for some notifications, such as missed calls.

Light Manager 4 — You can change settings for each individual notification type.

Light Manager lets you set custom notification lights for apps, services, and network connections. For example, a light might blink if you’re no longer on a 3G/4G network or system status. When you’re finished setting up your custom notification lights. Go to the top of the screen, tap Restart Light Manager to restart the app. And enable any changes you’ve made. Light Manager starts running when you start up your device, so there’s no need to open the app again. Tuck the app away in a miscellaneous folder on your home screen and enjoy your new rainbow of notification lights!