A very nifty feature that a handful of Android smartphones include is a notification LED. It is a simple yet effective way of notifying us about different events, without having to turn on the entire screen just to show the notification. Thankfully, there's also a way to show notifications even if you don't have an LED. However, if you do have one, the LED might not used how you would like it to be, including the events which turn the LED on, what color the LED is, and its flash interval. Most applications or system settings do not include any consideration for the LED, but there are a few apps which support Nexus and Galaxy phones (as well as a few other lucky ones) that can put some control in your hands.

Light Flow Lite [No Longer Available]

customize galaxy nexus led

The go-to app for configuring how your LED is being used is Light Flow Lite because it is essentially your notifications headquarters. You're able to do a variety of tasks, including:

  • Enabling or disabling different events
  • Changing their colors
  • Changing the frequency of the LED for events including missed calls
  • Configuring multiple Gmail accounts individually, SMS messaging, low battery status, and much more.

Not only that, but you can configure:

  • What other ways your phone can notify you, including a custom pattern of sounds and vibrations
  • The different volumes found on your phone, including the ring volume, media volume, alarm volume, and in-call volume
  • A few device-specific fixes
  • Sleep settings so that the app is inactive during certain times of the day or night
  • Settings that can pause the app while your phone is charging
  • Other LEDs (such as the camera flash) so that they can light up alternatively or in addition
  • Backing up and restoring your settings

Overall, it is well designed and extremely configurable to easily take care of all your needs. As you might expect from a "Lite" app, it has a full paid version you can get for $2.49 which updates your LED settings much more quickly and offers support for over 600 events.

Light Manager [No Longer Available]

customize galaxy nexus led

Another great LED notifications app you can use is called Light Manager. This app can also control the LED settings of different notification events, albeit the list is much smaller and the app's interface is not as well designed as Light Flow Lite's. In fact, in order to work well with third-party apps, you will need to have your phone rooted. Like Light Flow Lite, it also supports sleep settings to pause the app. However, it does set itself apart by offering LED settings for multiple system statuses, such as:

  • Whenever the battery is low or being charged
  • If Bluetooth is on/off
  • If Wi-Fi is on/off
  • If mobile data is on/off.

Additionally, you can generally set Red, Green, Blue, etc. to quickly choose a color, and then go into the app's settings and be more precise with what you mean by those colors via a hex code. This also allows you to create your own colors if there are any color names that aren't being used (example: configure Green to show a purple light).

Charging LED

galaxy nexus led

Last but not least, if you're highly paranoid about your battery level, check out an app called Charging LED. This app adds the ability for the LED to represent your battery level whenever the screen is turned off and your phone is being charged. You can configure different colors for all sorts of battery ranges, keeping you up to date on how much juice your phone has. While this app is much more simple than the above two, it does also offer the ability to import and export your settings, which is a nice plus.

Conclusion

These three apps should give you a significant amount of control over your notification LED so you can tailor it to do exactly what you want so you know at an instant what notifications are appearing on your phone.

For other Android goodness, check out our Android guide as well as our Best Android Apps!

Have you ever wanted to configure the notification LED but didn't know how? How would you configure your notifications now that you can? Let us know in the comments!

Image Credit: billbobful