How to Turn Off Lights on Sony XB21

Sony SRS XB21 speaker party light bars glowing.

This speaker comes equipped with a set of party LED lights that, by default, blink and pulsate in a blue-green color to the beat of whatever you play on the speaker. However sometimes, you may not want a party atmosphere, like when you want to play the speaker while drifting off to sleep or during the day in a bright area, where you can’t see the lights anyhow. So we show here how to turn off the Sony XB21 lights on this Bluetooth speaker for just these situations.

To turn off the lights, you need to find the LIGHT-BATT button. We find this control on the back of the unit, inside the ports compartment, as we see in the next picture.

The Sony XB21 -LIGHT BATT- button.

How to Turn Off Lights on Sony XB21, Step by Step

These lamps, which light a clear bar across the top and bottom edges of the speaker are set to flash their light show by default.

They work either when fresh out of the box, or after a factory reset. So to turn them OFF, do as follows…

1. Open the port compartment cap at the rear of the speaker with a coin or dull butter knife.
2. You can turn these lights off by pressing and holding for three seconds the LIGHT-BATT button inside that compartment. Doing so may save a bit of battery juice, especially when you don’t really need to waste any on running these lamps. E.g. Like when playing the speaker in daylight or in a bright room where the lights would be harder to see anyway. In the next picture, we show what the XB21 looks like with its lights OFF.

Sony XB21 with its party light bars dark.

Then when you want to turn them back on again, simply repeat what you did above. I.e. Press and hold in the LIGHT-BATT button for three seconds. At that point, the party lamps will resume their usual blinking.