[RFC PATCH 0/1] leds: Introduce the multi_max_intensity sysfs attribute

From: Armin Wolf

Date: Sat Mar 14 2026 - 19:01:28 EST


This patch series was born out of of a mailing list thread [1] where
i asked how to properly model a RGB LED as a multicolor LED. Said
LED has some exotic properties:

1. 5 global brightness levels.
2. 50 intensity levels for each R/G/B color components.

The current sysfs interface mandates that the maximum intensity value
for each color component should be the same as the maximum global
brightness. This makes sense for LEDs that only emulate global
brightness using led_mc_calc_color_components(), but causes problems
for LEDs that perform global brightness control in hardware.

Faking a maximum global brightness of 50 will not work in this case,
as the hardware can change the global brightness on its own. Userspace
applications might also prefer to know the true maximum brightness
value.

Because of this i decided to add a new sysfs attribute called
"multi_max_intensity". This attribute is similar to the
"max_brightness" sysfs attribute, except that it targets the intensity
values inside the "multi_intensity" sysfs atribute. I also decided to
cap intensity values comming from userspace to said maximum intensity
values to relieve drivers from doing it themself. This was already
proposed in a unrelated patch [2] and might break some misbehaving
userspace applications that do not respect max_brightness.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-leds/2d91a44e-fce2-42dc-b529-133ab4a191f0@xxxxxx/
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-leds/20260123-leds-multicolor-limit-intensity-v1-1-b37761c2fdfd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/

Armin Wolf (1):
leds: Introduce the multi_max_intensity sysfs attribute

.../ABI/testing/sysfs-class-led-multicolor | 16 +++++++--
Documentation/leds/leds-class-multicolor.rst | 21 ++++++++++-
drivers/hid/hid-lg-g15.c | 3 ++
drivers/hid/hid-playstation.c | 3 ++
drivers/leds/flash/leds-mt6360.c | 8 ++---
drivers/leds/led-class-multicolor.c | 36 +++++++++++++++++--
drivers/leds/leds-blinkm.c | 3 ++
drivers/leds/leds-cros_ec.c | 1 +
drivers/leds/leds-lp50xx.c | 1 +
drivers/leds/leds-lp55xx-common.c | 7 ++--
drivers/leds/leds-max77705.c | 1 +
drivers/leds/leds-sun50i-a100.c | 3 ++
drivers/leds/leds-turris-omnia.c | 1 +
drivers/leds/rgb/leds-group-multicolor.c | 1 +
drivers/leds/rgb/leds-ktd202x.c | 1 +
drivers/leds/rgb/leds-lp5812.c | 1 +
drivers/leds/rgb/leds-mt6370-rgb.c | 8 ++---
drivers/leds/rgb/leds-ncp5623.c | 4 +--
drivers/leds/rgb/leds-pwm-multicolor.c | 1 +
drivers/leds/rgb/leds-qcom-lpg.c | 1 +
drivers/platform/x86/silicom-platform.c | 30 ++++++++++++++++
drivers/platform/x86/uniwill/uniwill-acpi.c | 4 +--
include/linux/led-class-multicolor.h | 32 ++++++++++++++++-
23 files changed, 164 insertions(+), 23 deletions(-)

--
2.39.5