The HTC 10 only temporarily lights the Back and Recents keys, but today I’m going to show you how to keep the navigation button backlight on.
Love them or hate them, the HTC 10 has capacitive keys for the Back and Recents button. Personally, I enjoy it when the navigation bar doesn’t take up display space, but some people dislike them. These capacitive keys are backlit so that you know what the buttons do and where they are located. By default, this backlight turns off after a few seconds and this can be rather annoying to some people.
This can lead the owner of the HTC 10 to have to guess where the Back or Recents button actually is. If you use the smartphone enough, you can get in the habit of where it is, but this can be difficult for new HTC 10 customers.
Thankfully, HTC includes a way to always light the capacitive navigation keys for the HTC 10 while the display is on. It doesn’t matter what screen you’re at (in an app, the Home Screen, or even the Lock Screen), the backlight will always stay on when this option is selected.
So that’s what I want to show you today.
HTC 10 Keep Navigation Button Backlight On
- Launch the Settings application
- Scroll down and tap on the ‘Display, Gestures & Buttons’ option
- Scroll down again and tap on the ‘Navigation Button Backlight’ option
- Then tap on the ‘Always On When Screen is On’ option
Explanation
So, if you want to keep the HTC 10 navigation button backlight on anytime the screen is on, you’ll first need to launch the Settings application. From here, you can scroll down and tap on the Display, Gestures & Buttons option that you see in the Phone section of the Settings application. This will take you to another settings menu screen where you’ll want to scroll down until you reach the Phone section.
The first option you see in this Phone section should be labeled Navigation Button Backlight and this is the option you want to tap. By default, my HTC 10 was set to automatically turn off the navigation backlight buttons when it was inactive. This means they will automatically turn off a few seconds after you use them. You could touch the screen, home button, volume buttons, etc. and the navigation buttons will not light up.
However, once you touch the Back or Recents button, you’ll see both of them light up. This doesn’t seem very useful to me because after I have pressed one, I don’t need to see where the button is. In any case, after tapping the Navigation Button Backlight option here, you should get a pop-up menu that lets you select between two options. If you tap on the Always On When Screen is On option, this will make the navigation button backlight turn on instantly.
With this option selected, anytime your display is on you will see the navigation button backlight turn on too. This is very useful for new HTC 10 owners, but it’a also useful for those who just like to always be able to see where those two buttons are located. There’s no guessing as to where the Back and Recents buttons are when they are always lit up when the screen is on. This seems like a better default setting for the HTC 10, so I’m not sure why they hid this option in the Settings application.
As mentioned in the video embedded above, I think I figured out a way to disable the backlight of these two buttons all the time. I just need to do some tests and find out if it works or not. If it works, then I’ll share this tip with you tomorrow but if it doesn’t, then I’ll have a different HTC 10 tip to share with you.
