Using the command line, you can easily control the backlight. Let’s increase both the laptop screen backlight, and the keyboard backlight.

The configuration is altered by editing a text file. Using a Thinkpad laptop as reference, we’ll start with the screen backlight.

sudo sh -c 'echo 2 > /sys/class/leds/tpacpi::kbd_backlight/brightness'

Note that I was able to set the maximum. I knew the value 2 to be the maximum after consulting the following file:

/sys/class/leds/tpacpi::kbd_backlight/max_brightness

To change my screen brightness, I’m editing the following:

sudo sh -c 'echo 1500 > /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness'

This time I went with something a little lower than the maximum setting. Again, the maximum value can be found here:

/sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/max_brightness

Note, it’s always a good idea to backup your config files before altering it. In addition, before running the previous commands, always be sure to consult the original file first.