For those using an Apple Magic Keyboard with a T2-secured Mac, the upcoming Linux 6.11 kernel will enable working keyboard backlight support.

With Apple not contributing to the Linux kernel, support for keyboard backlight controls and other functionality is left to the open-source community. It's not always punctual as a result but support ultimately materializes as developers get their hands on more hardware and find a new itch to scratch. The latest improvement on the way is enabling the Magic Keyboard backlight to work with Macs sporting the T2 security chip.

Orlando Chamberlain explained in a [1]patch enabling the magic keyboard backlight for T2 Macs:

"Unlike T2 Macs with Butterfly keyboard, who have their keyboard backlight on the USB device the T2 Macs with Magic keyboard have their backlight on the Touchbar backlight device (05ac:8102).

Support for Butterfly keyboards has already been added in commit 9018eacbe623 ("HID: apple: Add support for keyboard backlight on certain T2 Macs.") This patch adds support for the Magic keyboards."

That prior keyboard backlight support for select T2 Macs came back in February 2022 while now this newest patch should take care of the support for the rest. That patch is queued into the HID subsystem's "for-next" Git branch ahead of the Linux 6.11 merge window opening later this month. Linux 6.11 stable in turn should be out in September should you have an affected Mac and be interested in the keyboard backlight support.



[1] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/hid/hid.git/commit/?h=for-next&id=394ba612f9419ec5bfebbffb72212fd3b2094986