How To: Enable LED 'Blink' Notifications in webOS 1.2 | webOS Nation

How To: Enable LED 'Blink' Notifications in webOS 1.2

by Dieter Bohn Tue, 29 Sep 2009 7:37 pm EDT

About that center button; it's basically unnecessary at this stage of the game (Palm even removed it from the Pixi). One thing it can do: light up. Wouldn't it be grand to have it light up when you have new messages?  We saw the code to enable it was there in the 1.2 leak and folks, it's still there in the official 1.2 release - but still not enabled.

Now, let's get to the caveats.

  1. Palm left the code for 'blink notifications,' which make the center button light up when you have new messages, 'commented out.' This means that the code is there but non-functional.
  2. Palm probably did that for a reason, so following the instructions linked below may 'break stuff.' We don't know what stuff yet, either.
  3. This trick is not available as a simple patch yet, so you're going to be modifying core webOS files. You need to do backups, you need to be sure you know what's happening here, and you need to remember to restore your backups before updating webOS.
  4. Given how simple this is, it's highly likely that when WebOS Quick Install and PreWare get fully updated to work with 1.2.0, there will probably be a simpler, somewhat safer way to do this. (Both updates are coming as soon as the coders can do them, have patience!) (Update: jack187 has made a patch, frito shows you how to implement it, should be in preware soon)
  5. Don't blame us if this doesn't work.  See also caveat #2.

Not scared off yet?  Ok then. All you need to do to turn on Blink Notification is un-comment the relevant code in two files, as jp22382 helpfully explains in this post. That will enable the magical switch you see in the image above. This blogger did it and this blogger's center button now flashes about every five seconds whenever his Pre has an unread text message.

Thanks to azkevman for the heads-up!