UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

Recently received my MY22 Volkswagen Polo R Line and noticed the ambient lighting strips underneath the dashboard and on the door side panels.

It seems they're set to white by default with no configuration menu in the settings/Infotainment system to change colours, just to turn the feature on/off.

Whilst I like the white, it would be nice to have the ability to change colours. I was wondering if anyone has had any success via something like OBDeleven or MyCarly OBD coders? I've seen some videos online of people using similar coding to achieve this, but not sure if there is any physical/hardware limit on the Polo specifically - i.e., if the light strip is just white bulbs or if they're LED?

Sorry for the potentially stupid question

Hi Luke and welcome to the fourm.

Further down on this forum this topic was recently discussed:
viewtopic.php?t=77916

In short, the answer is no, it cannot be changed.

lukew0088 wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 9:29 pm Recently received my MY22 Volkswagen Polo R Line and noticed the ambient lighting strips underneath the dashboard and on the door side panels.

It seems they're set to white by default with no configuration menu in the settings/Infotainment system to change colours, just to turn the feature on/off.

Whilst I like the white, it would be nice to have the ability to change colours. I was wondering if anyone has had any success via something like OBDeleven or MyCarly OBD coders? I've seen some videos online of people using similar coding to achieve this, but not sure if there is any physical/hardware limit on the Polo specifically - i.e., if the light strip is just white bulbs or if they're LED?

Sorry for the potentially stupid question

Have you got a picture of these lighting strips in your motor?

You could try & use something like these if you wanted to change the feel

2fast4ya wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 3:19 pm Have you got a picture of these lighting strips in your motor?

I can show you mine.

There’s quite a lot of discussion on other forums about the ability to have different colour options for interior ambient lighting and some other ‘essential’ features. Each to their own and I know we all like different things which is good thing, otherwise life would soon get boring. However, IMHO only having single colour ambient lighting is a bit of a first world problem. It’s not that many years ago that the majority of cars didn’t have ambient lighting at all or many of the other ‘must have’ features that car manufacturers’ marketing departments have convinced us we now can’t live without. I think the mk8 Golf has 30 different colour options for its ambient lighting - does anyone really need that many colour choices? - a case of overkill and a bit gimmicky maybe?

Some of the cars I owned in my early driving years were devoid of any basic ‘creature comforts’ that we all take for granted these days on pretty much all cars - e.g. no inertia reel seatbelts (they were static), no rear seatbelts at all, no sound system of any form (didn’t even have a basic two band radio), no tinted or electric windows, no central locking, no exterior door mirrors, no rear screen heating element, no cloth or leather seats (seats in my first two cars were vinyl / plastic). My first car didn’t even have sun visors! , the sealed beam headlamps weren’t much brighter than candles and windscreen washers were operated by pumping a plunger button on the dashboard.

Fortunately, technology has moved on and all cars are now better built, pretty well equipped - and thankfully, much safer. However, I do find the many discussions on other forums quite amusing around enabling or retro-fitting ‘must have’ features such as wireless phone charging, having sat nav maps on the main instrument display as well as the infotainment screen and having multiple colour options for ambient lighting.

I personally think the ‘no other colour’ option / white-only ambient lighting is fine (less is more?) as it ties in nicely with the red / white background lighting of the other displays and switchgear. Would I be bothered if there was no ambient lighting? Not at all - my previous generation Polo GTI didn’t have it and it was no less a car for not having it.

The above is in no way intended to be critical of anyone who would like more ambient lighting colour options - as said, we’re all different and place different values on features in our cars . However, I for one don’t have any issues with white only.

The younger generation are all about RGB these days

They look like the same style , so maybe able to plug n play ? And get the colours you want ,
A friend of mine had the multi colour ones in his merc & could change the brightness & colours on the headunit .
They looked crisp even on dimmer setting.