How to set colors for individual keys in iCUE?

[PackYourBaggins]

So I've had a Corsair K95 RGB for a little while now, but I kinda just left the default rainbow lighting effect on it since I had it. I've barely used the software honestly. But now I wanna set individual colors for different keys. For example, I want my WASD keys to be a different color from the rest of the letter keys. I'd also like to set G keys to be different colors, as well as all my F keys.

 

I tried researching but came up mostly empty. I found old threads talking about this on reddit, but they were from like 2 years ago and updates have changed a few things since then. Could anyone provide a step-by-step guide on how to achieve this? Thanks!

[Crunken]

I don't have a corsair keyboard with RGB, but i have their RGB led strip for my case and i think it works the same, you gotta set up a bottom layer with whatever color you want (in the screenshot i have white) and then you add a second effect on a layer above it (pink in the screenshot) and choose another effect/color and then click the keys you want in that color

[Corsair Nick]

Same philosophy as @Crunken explained, just different device.  We actually have a whole channel on YouTube dedicated to guides for our devices and software to help you guys out.  Let me know if you run into any issues setting up your lighting, and I'll try and help you out. 

 

 

[Joey-Joe-Joe]

I was actually just looking for the instructions on how to do individual lights. However, in my icue software, which is all up to date, I don't have a + symbol in the lighting effects tab, only a + symbol in the actions tab.

 

 

[Joey-Joe-Joe]

OK, so I realized my keyboard, apparently, has to be plugged into my PC to customize the key lights, which is fine. However, as soon as I unplug my keyboard and want to use it wireless, my key lights go back to default. Can custom key lighting not be used while the keyboard is wireless? I messed around for a while and no matter what I did, as soon as I unplugged the keyboard, it would only let me use the standard color profiles.

[Joey-Joe-Joe]

Corsair guy, come back! No way to make this function with a wireless RGB keyboard? LOL!

[sandvich64]

hold down shift or control and click on the keys you want lit up

[Corsair Nick]

Sorry guys, was at Twitchcon this past week working the booth. @Joey-Joe-Joe right now the K57 wireless uses the predefined profiles over wireless and allows for individual per key over wired.  The reason we do this is because we don't want to impact performance (sub-1ms) by sending the amount of data for each key.  Mice and headsets have fewer zones for customization, versus a keyboard with over 104, which is why those devices allow for the same integration over wired and wireless.

[Joey-Joe-Joe]

Damn, that's disappointing. I really wanted to, at least, have W,A,S,D, different colors. I don't suppose you guys sell different colored keys for the wireless K57?

 

I game from my living room couch, hence the necessity of needing it to be wireless.

[Corsair Nick]

Since it's a membrane keyboard, the keycaps are not meant to be interchangeable.  I'll pass the feedback on to our developers for consideration towards future releases, and potential software updates should someone in your case, want per key addressing.

[Joey-Joe-Joe]

51 minutes ago, Corsair Nick said:

Since it's a membrane keyboard, the keycaps are not meant to be interchangeable.  I'll pass the feedback on to our developers for consideration towards future releases, and potential software updates should someone in your case, want per key addressing.

Isn't there on board memory on the keyboard to store the default profiles? Wouldn't there be a way at some point to allow for a custom profile to be stored on the keyboard just like all of the pre-defined color profiles and not add any additional lag to the 1ms?

[Yebi]

Specs say it has memory, so that should be possible. Have you tried setting up a hardware profile? My K95 does allow up to 5 custom light effects per onboard profile, which is plenty for what you're trying to do

[Lusayalumino]

I am so glad I found this thread. I just got my brand new K57 two days ago -- and I absolutely love everything about it. Unfortunately, after struggling for days trying to figure out why my lights wouldn't work when I unplugged from USB, I finally found this thread.

 

I'm heart broken to discover that my custom RGB lighting profile can't be used over wireless. All I need is one single static lighting profile for a sophisticated program I use that needs to map the keys.

 

If this keyboard could do that -- I'm not exaggerating, I'd gladly pay $200 for it. Is there any possible way to 'steal' one of the 10 builtin onboard lighting profiles? I need 8 different colors -- I'd gladly purchase 8 sets of colored keycaps if they were available.

 

I'm going to wait a week or two before sending the keyboard back -- in hopes that somebody has some creative solution. Really appreciate any wisdom anyone may be able to provide. I thought I'd finally found the perfect keyboard.

 

[Lusayalumino]

On 10/2/2019 at 6:05 PM, Corsair Nick said:

Since it's a membrane keyboard, the keycaps are not meant to be interchangeable.  I'll pass the feedback on to our developers for consideration towards future releases, and potential software updates should someone in your case, want per key addressing.

Hi Nick. Thanks so much for interacting with us on this. Is there any other possible creative workarounds that you might consider to create one single custom onboard static lighting profile? Or some other creative solution to accomplish having one available custom lighting profile when using the K57 wirelessly?

[Lusayalumino]

On 10/3/2019 at 1:27 PM, Yebi said:

Specs say it has memory, so that should be possible. Have you tried setting up a hardware profile? My K95 does allow up to 5 custom light effects per onboard profile, which is plenty for what you're trying to do

It does have memory, and allows system settings and custom key configs / macros to be written to the device -- but not the lighting profiles. Unfortunately, it seems that with the K57 -- iCue does not give the option of having a Hardware Profile. Do you by chance have any other ideas to try to implement this? Thanks!

[Corsair Nick]

I'll let the developer know your feedback, and see what creative options we might be able to implement on our end, or on a future release.  As of right now there are no workarounds I can think of that would give you the customization you're looking for.

[Lusayalumino]

19 hours ago, Corsair Nick said:

I'll let the developer know your feedback, and see what creative options we might be able to implement on our end, or on a future release.  As of right now there are no workarounds I can think of that would give you the customization you're looking for.

Thanks so much Nick. I'm contemplating buying another keyboard, and keeping this one in storage in hopes that something will change in the future. I love it that much.

[Spookdiertje]

So.. we are in 2021 now, and this is still not possible??  This is very disappointing, even more so because I have read nothing about not being able to use your self created profiles wirelessly. There is no warning about that. 
I've just recently got the K57 RGB as a late birthday present and I was also having the same issue as Joey-Joe-Joe had in 2019, just stumbled upon this thread. 
It really sucks (sorry for my language, but it does) that you can't even store at least one of your own profiles to the keyboard.
When will they be changing this?  

[Corsair Nick]

No updates right now on changes being made to allow per-key lighting over wireless.  The impact to wireless performance is one of reasons it's not available as mentioned above.

[DarkLady]

I found this thread when looking into a similar issue: I recently got an Ironclaw RGB wireless mouse, and was attempting to sync the K57 keyboard lighting to that of the mouse through the iCUE software, only to find that this feature only works when the keyboard is plugged into my computer. This is exceptionally disappointing, because I paid for a wireless RGB keyboard to sync with my mouse. It is misleading to offer a RGB sync feature and a wireless feature *that people are paying for* only to have them be mutually exclusive. I bought the keyboard and mouse specifically to work together *and* be wireless, and I feel that now I have wasted my money.

[Fabrica]

What is this garbage? This is not a wireless RGB keyboard. This is trash - in Bluetooth mode it keeps doing these wavy RGB which are extremely annoying. What is wrong with Corsair?