Future Mac, iPad keyboards could offer multiple colors on backlit keys

Apple has been granted a patent (number 10,528,152) for “mixed input lighting using multiple light sources with switchable operational state.” It involves Mac and iPad keyboards with colored backlighting on individual keys for user feedback.

In the patent, Apple notes that keys on keyboard, buttons, or other input devices may have internal lighting to provide either feedback to a user or for an improved user experience. While some conventional keyboards may include internal illumination for keys, such conventional keyboards typically don’t offer the ability to dynamically control lighting schemes, such as color or tone, for each of the keys individually. 

Apple says that to provide improved user experience and increase potential for feedback to a user, it would be helpful to have keys of keyboards, or other input devices, with individually controllable variable internal illumination.

Here’s the summary of the patent filing: “Disclosed are structures, devices, methods and systems for providing dynamically variable internal illumination to individual input devices of an electronic device, such as keys of a keyboard. In some embodiments, input devices contain multiple LEDs whose light intensity may be varied to alter a tone or a color of light used for the internal illumination a key. 

“The LEDs may be micro LEDs and may be internal components of the input device as a unit. In some embodiments, the LEDs are white light LEDs having different phosphor thicknesses. In some embodiments the LEDs may be RGB LEDs, with individual control of color contributions to modify the internal illumination. Systems incorporating such input devices may need only a reduced set of LED control units. Systems can include a processing unit and a light sensor or camera to detect ambient lighting and adjust internal illumination of an input device accordingly.”