Logitech Setpoint and the Annoying Low Battery Warning
If any of you have a Logitech wireless mouse, and you have the Logitech Setpoint software installed, you've surely noticed that the Low Battery Warning popup gets annoying, really quick.
It's not very accurate. When it starts reporting my batteries as being "CRITICAL", it means that I have about two weeks of using my mouse left before the mouse starts having communication issues. I'd rather not be forced to buy new batteries every three weeks just to shut up an annoying popup.
I really like the extra buttons on my mouse, so shutting down Setpoint isn't a good option.
Searching the Logitech Forums proved fruitless. Not only is there not a way to turn the blasted thing off, but the programmers seem to have no motivation to program that functionality in.
I decided to take matters into my own hands. After some searching, I found the xml file where Setpoint keeps its language information. I played with the settings a bit, and found a solution.
Browse to your Setpoint program folder. It's probably in Program Files/Logitech/SetPoint
With your favorite text editor (Notepad will work fine), open KEM.xml, and find the following lines:
<String ALIAS="IDS_BATT_STATUS_MSG">Your %1's batteries are %2</String>
If you change that line to:
<String ALIAS="IDS_BATT_STATUS_MSG"></String>
You will find that the popup never rears its ugly head, again. The great thing about this fix is that you can still hover over the tray icon, and see your battery status.
As a side note, if you wish, you can change that text to whatever you would like. I changed it to something more amusing, and found that, although it was still annoying, the popup wasn't nearly as bad if it were cursing at me.
November 9th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
thank you for this!!!! that popup would literally popup every minute (WAY too often). the worse was when i was trying to close a program and that annoying popup would cover the close button.
not only is the popup gone but now i’m saving energy by having to replace my rechargable batteries less often – so it’s good for the environment (okay, maybe it’s not that big of a deal.
thanks again!
December 20th, 2007 at 8:40 am
I have setpoint program files but am using a dell bluetooth mouse. I have the annoying low bat warning but bats are new. The line to remove in my KEM.xml file did not read exactly as the one you have above. instead: Your %1′s batteries are %2
I replaced it with the line you suggested but it didnt get rid of the warnings. I actually tried removing the entire file but the warning is still there.
Any ideas???
i would love to be free of this popup, too
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:44 pm
i had the same msg “Your %1′s batteries are %2″ couldnt get rid of it till i went to taksbar properties by right clicking on the taskbar. then on the notification are options i clicked customise and set the warning icon to always hide.
January 28th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Thank-you for this. If you want some babies, come to me. I hated that bloody popup!
February 5th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Excellent – did a Google search for “SetPoint” “Annoying” and “Message”
First hit.
February 5th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Thanks – I found your post by Googling on:
Logitech batteries are critical popup off
The popup was driving me nuts. Showing up and disappearing 3 times a minute. Using 2500 MAh NiMH batteries (the environmental and economical choice, but lower Voltage).
I tried searching through the registry, but found nothing. Interesting that they use an XML file for this.
Note that the change did not take effect until I Exited Logitech Setpoint by right clicking on the icon in the taskbar (the one for Setpoint, not the warning one, that can’t be clicked).
I then restarted Setpoint by clicking on Start | Program Files | Startup | Setpoint. Gone is the annoying popup, but Setpoint is still active!
February 5th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
@Tom: No babies, thank you. I’ve already eaten.
@Jerome: Oh, you have a point. I seem to have forgotten to point out that the program needs to be restarted! Thank you!
February 10th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Yes, yes, yes! I thank you for your efforts and the publishing thereof!
February 19th, 2008 at 5:41 am
They say that laziness is the mother of all creation, however i believe annoying things can get a close second if not a first place.
Anyway thanks for taking the time to fix what Logitech cannot be bothered with.
March 16th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Thanks! you da man
March 27th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Now if you only had a cure for the SetPoint problems I see many people (including me!) in the Logitech forums are having, namely that all the customizing options don’t show up despite multiple uninstalls, reinstalls & other tricks. Either the USB receiver can’t install or when it does it only works as a MS HID compliant. Total PITA.
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Thank you. Top notch stuff! You made me able to enjoy my htpc with big screen again!
April 29th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Thank you!!!!
May 14th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Thank you so much. That message starts to appear days before the batteries are actually critical and drove me nuts every 2 seconds. This trick worked perfectly.
May 26th, 2008 at 7:29 am
Great stuff, this actually cause the intensive game I play to occasionally crash…
May 30th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Great investigation. Thank you!
June 12th, 2008 at 6:43 am
Wicked! It was driving me NUTS! I’ve been running for 2 weeks on batteries which – according to the pop-up – are critical… I guess that Logitech went and bought themselves a bunch of Duracell stocks
June 14th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
AWESOME! Thank you so much! I’ve been looking for a fix for this for literally months and have called tech support about it, but to no avail. I have a G7 with rechargable batteries, so i used to get that message at least twice a week. Again, thanks so much
June 17th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Thanks, I hated that &)())_*&* popup!
June 29th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
I use my HP wireless mouse and keyboard. I have had it for about 2 years and then recently a few months ago i started getting this annoying pop up to replace my wireless battery. It never used to do this before, my mouse would just stop working.I’m not sure if this is the same pop up or not but i looked and i dont have any logitech folder so im not sure how to get rid of this problem.. any help please?
July 10th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
thanks – this works a charm!
Now – do you know the file that Setpoint uses to store the external applications in? I keep trying to delete the settings for acrobat because Logitech’s default is to scroll 3 pages at a time for some crazy reason (who wants to read every 4th page in a pdf?). Every time I delete the entry from “Manage Programs” in the “MicroGear Precision Scroll Wheel” tab for my MX Revolution, it works fine until I restart – at which point Acrobat reappears in the list along with its balmy default behaviour.
Following your logic I edited all the XML files in the directory you mentioned and searched for “acrobat” but to no avail.
July 14th, 2008 at 10:30 am
THANK YOU!! Worked perfectly after altering .xml file and then restarting Setpoint.
Thank you, thank you, thank you…
July 19th, 2008 at 2:08 am
Thanks, that was really getting annoying, and it keeps interrupting me during fullscreen apps. Now if only I could get the mouse to stop blinking.
August 14th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Thank you very much! And another thing – the program doesn’t need to be exited, just wait a while and it’ll go away.. THANK YOU!! Stupid thing blocking me everywhere I click..
August 23rd, 2008 at 2:38 pm
THANK YOU!!
August 29th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Thanks! Ace, got here by google and sorted out that waste-of-time warning. Thanks again.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:59 am
AWESOME! Thanks sooo much.
September 13th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
THANKS!!! I noticed right after buying this thing that the “OMG CHANGE YOUR BATTERIES QUICK!!!” message pre-dated the actual death of my batteries by nearly a MONTH … and I’m a heavy PC user … so it was either change batteries that are nowhere near “critical” or put up with this annoying popup message every 60 seconds for a month … including popping up while in 3D games which almost always screwed something up from the gamma of the game to taking the focus of my control off the game and onto the popup. I keep plenty of batteries in the house and at my PC so if my first warning of dead batteries is a dead mouse … it’s a quick fix, I don’t need a month notice, thanks.
Came across this in a Google search … and the popup is already dead. THANK YOU!!!
September 24th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
THANKYOU VERY VERY MUCH!!!!!! i was about to murder my mouse before i found this nice help blog!
i beleive everyone else has covered the problems this stupid nag causes.
who the hell at logitech thought it was a good idea to instal a nagscreen?
- should be fired!!
October 1st, 2008 at 6:11 am
Thanks – I only got my new Logitech keyboard and mouse yesterday and it has been driving me mad all day with the stupid annoying message.
Great work!!!
October 5th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Ty!
I can’t believe logitech makes mice for gamers(okay wireless aren’t for gamers but all the buttons make it equal) and some retarded popup just ruins the game(it gives me about 10sec of fps lag and often resets the games gamma settings to default.
November 8th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Some questions:
How to remove low battery alert icon from tray area?
How to set critical alert when remaining is only 1 %? Where is this information stored? Registry? XML?
November 8th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
I ask, I answer
To remove critical battery (blinking) icon form notification tray.
Open default.xml (located in setpoint dir) and find line:
1
change it to:
0
Save, close setpoint and run it again or restart PC. Voila!
Worked for me. Damn logitech and it stupid software…
November 8th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
The line I begins – OEMOption Name=”ShowLowBatteryIcon”
November 20th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Nicely done! That warning was really bothersome!
November 26th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Thank you VERY much for the fix. The only real warning I need to know I should replace the batteries is when the cursor stops moving.
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:47 pm
sweet f’ing christ THANK YOU!!
too bad logitech couldnt care less about their end users.
December 3rd, 2008 at 3:50 pm
If you cannot save the file, you may need to change permissions for it.
December 31st, 2008 at 11:17 am
If Vista denies you to save the xml file, save it elsewhere, then copy in to the folder back to the orginal folder you startet the file from! Vista might ask you permission first, just allow.
January 8th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Finally! Thanx very much!
January 14th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Thank you so much for this fix. I’ve been wanting to get rid pop-up for a long time.
January 17th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Thank you so much. Just think of all the money we’ll save by not having to buy batteries unnecessarily.
February 9th, 2009 at 8:28 am
Thanks very much for figuring this out.
Also, thanks to Allar for spotting how to disable the flashing icon.
February 17th, 2009 at 9:08 am
Thanks a lot for this, it was driving me bonkers and my stress levels rose whenever I saw the word “critical”.
Lying in hospital after multiple heart attacks = critical
Batteries in mouse starting to run low = not critical
March 19th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Ouuuuuu thanx a lot!!!! This was something which really pissed me so much. Who could put something like this in and gave no switch to shut it off… the answer is so clear, just dumb heads… Thanx man! You saved my sanity:)
March 28th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Thanks, Allar, for that awesome tip! The flashing icon was very annoying.
April 21st, 2009 at 7:33 am
So. Much. Relief.
Thank you!
Maybe we should start a petition to get Logitech to remove that ridiculous “feature”. I would have switched to a Microsoft mouse on account of it had I not found this post. Not to mention it’s basically “anti-energy-star”.
April 24th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
this fix saved my sanity at work. Thank you!
April 26th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Brilliant!
Had my problem fixed seconds after getting to this page. Even took the time to read the rest of the posts after it was working.
critical lol… funny stuff
=]
May 4th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Just bought a new Logitech mouse and this nag screen was going to start driving me nuts, but thanks to you it’s now leaving me in peace. The main problem was the frequency of it! Don’t know how much longer these batteries are going to last but they’re certainly not ‘critical’. Worked a charm, thanks very much!
June 20th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Amazing solution. It seems to be working fine! You alone’s better than the entire logishit tech support and software development departments!
July 3rd, 2009 at 4:23 am
Just got a new laptop running Vista home premium 64bit. Same old diNovo
Haven’t even given the media pad a chance to get a low battery before I change the string. Bluetooth laptop to so no dongle needed. If you got a Phone that links up to your laptop and want them annoying Vista drivers request to stop click here:
http://discussions.nokiausa.com/discussions/board/message?board.id=pcsuite&message.id=36291#M36291
Forgot where I got it but it was the best idea ever. So now when I load Vista NOTHING POPUP
DDDDD
July 30th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
D00d! U r0x!
Err… I meant: thanks for this. You made my day; this popup has been bugging me for the last couple of days now. Right now it’s singing its death song (have yet to restart Setpoint).
August 4th, 2009 at 9:57 am
It is a shame that Logitech allowed the battery pop-up issue to exist. This fix, though a little unnerving to change background files, worked. And yes, I was one of those who ignored the message and waited for the mouse to actually quit. This fix ends years of wasted time waiting for the pop-up to drop out of the way, wasted effort with useless contacts with Logitech and wasted time with searches on the internet. Bravo for saving sanity and batteries. Logitech should be required to compensate for what could be multi-thousands of batteries discarded before their life expired and a major annoyance with a basically good product.
August 11th, 2009 at 6:44 am
thanks mate, always wanted to stop this, so freakin ennoying!
August 15th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
My blessed Pioneer !!!
Thank-you sooo much !!, it also drove my ass berserk ! How can it not?!
How can they not, for more than 2 years after continuing refining
the SetPoint software, publish it without atleast placing a button
to turn-off the infamous POPUP.
Well..- Dont the registered’s, should enjoy the full-flavored, POPUP
free version of their software?
Well- it’s very simple explained in my world…A business connection
between the mouse and the energizer bunny’s, have been made.
A side note:
Also, for who that would like to REALLY take advantage, and configure their Logitech Rat, there’s a add-on software called “UberOptions” that (was created again, by a pissed and disapointed user) will change every aspect of your mouse and even the right or left mouse for Anything you like so you could even configure it for games that wont let you use the right mouse button for walk!. altough there is non specific mouse software to do the same called “X-Mousebuttoncontrol”.
August 23rd, 2009 at 11:18 am
DELL BLUETOOTH MOUSE users take notice:
The published xml patch at the beginning of this stream does not fix the problem for a DELL Bluetooth Mouse (at least not in my case). However, if your Dell is running the Toshiba Bluetooth driver — for example, Bluetooth Stack for Windows by Toshiba, version v4.31.02.6(D) — you can disable the battery warning popup via the Bluetooth Manager. This is NOT the SetPoint software.
Do the following:
1. Right-click on the BlueTooth manager icon in the system tray (squiggly green bluetooth icon within a vertical oval)
2. Select “Bluetooth Settings” (in my case, the first option on the popup menu)
3. Make sure “Dell BT Mouse” device is highlighted, then Click “Detail…” button
4. Unselect the checkbox labeled “Activate low battery alarm when…”
5. Click “OK” or “Apply”. Exit the Bluetooth Manager windows.
6. Voila! No more annoying pop-up.
September 1st, 2009 at 11:22 am
You couldn’t have mentioned this $50 worth of AA batteries ago? ;-O Still love you, though.
September 9th, 2009 at 7:24 am
THANK YOU!
I had exact same problem, in fact I even think setpoint was clogging my system by trying to show that damn popup all the time.
For other users, if you cant match the string shown exactly, try just searching “” Sometimes appostrophe’s are encoded in hex code in your XML, I know mine were.
September 26th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Has anyone found a way to hide the blinking icon as well?
October 11th, 2009 at 10:51 am
IT DOESN’T WORK!!!!
SETPOINT VERSION 4.80.103
October 11th, 2009 at 10:56 am
ok i changed the 1% to 0% and its working
10x
November 6th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
oh my god… thank you all so much. especially for the flashing try icon.
November 12th, 2009 at 3:49 am
Wow. I can’t believe it took me this long to find this. This is AWESOME, worked like a charm. It’s been years I’ve wanted to get rid of that thing!!!!
May someone totally have your babies. Many thanks.
November 19th, 2009 at 3:16 am
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
And thanks Google for pointing me here.
November 22nd, 2009 at 6:39 pm
thank god this is possible. excellent work.
December 24th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
helped me a lot, i was too lazy to dig this myself, thx again
January 17th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Note that in Vista (and propably with Win7 too) you must use administrator mode to edit the default.xml’s <OEMOption Name="ShowLowBatteryIcon">1</OEMOption > value to 0.
For example when using Notepad++ with normal user permissions it seemed that the edit was saved correctly but the annoying Alert icon would still show up after SetPoint was restarted. When opening default.xml with superuser rights it was revealed that none of the edits made in normal usermode were really saved (not sure why Notepad++ didn’t inform about the permission problem).
So in short, edit the default.xml with adminstrator rights and after restarting SetPoint it will not show the alert anymore. Yey!
January 27th, 2010 at 1:02 am
omg thankyouthankyouthankyou!!!!1one That stupid popup and blinking icon were annoying the heck out of me! So stupid they added this "feature" without being able to turn it off!
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:41 am
Thank you very much, I couldnt manage to stop it !
March 9th, 2010 at 6:53 am
Thanks for this. Extremely annoying "feature" disabled.
June 10th, 2010 at 10:58 pm
Googled: logitech "batteries are critical". Second hit.
Thanks a ton! I was getting the message every 3 to 5 seconds, both at home (MX610) and at work (MX Revolution).
Not too annoying at work, since it has internal batteries and a charging station, but the AA batteries in my MX610 can last several weeks after it pops up. I’ve started using rechargeable batteries in it, so it’s a good reminder, but not every few seconds.
June 16th, 2010 at 2:26 pm
googled this one with "logitech mx1100 annoying low battery popup" 2nd link and 100% good solution. Thanks a lot man that buggy Set Point keep on saying my battery is low even though ive just recharged those batteries like 3 weeks ago (tho i sometimes forget to turn it off for the night). Didnt have to restart pc/set point to make it work.
Great job
Cheers.
July 3rd, 2010 at 8:27 am
You can now the notifications off from Logitech Setpoint/Tools. They are set by defaut once at 3 days.
My new MX1100 mouse, part of a Wave Pro Desktop, went from good to low battery after a week of pretty heavy use – 8-12 hours/day. No notifications at all, however… I wonder why – they were checked on Setpoing.
July 30th, 2010 at 12:07 am
You’re a bad@ss. Thank you!
Just a note: This fix gets rid of the annoying Logitech flashing tray icon as well as the notification pop ups. (I did see at least one commenter mention this). So if you are looking to get rid of or disable the flashing critical mouse battery icon for your Logitech mouse*, this is the fix for you.
You might want to add Jerome’s suggestion to restart the software and Thx’s suggestion to "run Notepad as an administrator" (in Vista/7) to your original post. I figured these things out myself, but I know not everyone will.
*Some free SEO for your help
August 16th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Sweet Jesus I should have looked this up sooner! Thank you! I want to find the programmer that thought the battery warning was a good idea and jam my MX Revolution through their skull!
September 7th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Sir, thank you – for saving me from this damn annoying warning. (MX620)
November 15th, 2010 at 11:36 am
There may be other programs that warn you as well. I had to to this and also kill TosBtBty.exe (which I do at each boot up when the battery is dead).
November 20th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Dude the stuff about win7 up there works perfect if this doesnt. u just edit the default.xml. anyways it worked so thx a lot
December 2nd, 2010 at 10:18 am
Awesome. AWESOME! How many years I’ve been looking at that stoopid blinking triangle. And now it’s gone. Forever! I went with the ‘no text’ in the XML tag route, and the icon disappeared after a restart. Also, changing the text in the notifications is more fun than it sounds.
Also, great recommendation about the ‘always hide’ option for the tray icons. I never bothered looking into that before, and I’ve now hidden the ten pointless freaking icons that are related to ‘work’ settings that I can’t get rid of.
Excellent.
January 14th, 2011 at 11:47 am
Thank God I found this!!! 3 years later and that popup is still pissing off users. I wonder if the Logitech engineers know how annoying that is.
February 25th, 2011 at 5:00 pm
God – Thank You!!
It was driving me crazy (not only me but Windows and games, too).
April 26th, 2011 at 9:22 pm
Doesn’t work for me because the line I found does not read: <String ALIAS="IDS_BATT_STATUS_MSG">Your %1′s batteries are %2</String>
Instead it reads: <String ALIAS="IDS_BATT_STATUS_MSG">Your %1's batteries are %2</String>
and it will not allow me to change it.
June 10th, 2011 at 5:30 am
Thanks! It wasn’t only me who have thought the notification is annoying!
June 10th, 2011 at 5:40 am
@Cynthia
change it and save it in other folder. then move the original file to elsewhere and replace the fixed file.
August 24th, 2011 at 12:59 pm
I have Windows 7 and KEM.xml edit didn’t work, I even deleted any reference that had mouse and battery in the string BUT….. I edited "default.xml" > <OEMOption> <OEMOption Name="ShowLowBatteryIcon">1</OEMOption >and changed the >1< to a 0 (zero). Even with an Administrator account I was unable to simply open, edit, close the file so this is what works … right click the "default.xml" file and copy, paste to your desktop, open, edit, close (save), then go back to the original "default.xml" file in the setpoint folder, right click it and select rename, I renamed it "default.lmx" and anytime it says you need administrator rights just click "continue". Now drag and drop the edited desktop file into the setpoint folder and delete the "default.lmx" file and say bye to the stupid poopup icon!
October 4th, 2011 at 4:36 am
Thank god I finally found a way to fix this! Thank you so much, this has been annoying me for years…
March 13th, 2012 at 1:40 pm
Thank you so much. I was about to put my fist through the screen. You saved me a computer
June 1st, 2012 at 6:12 pm
Thanx man! Easy to do but hard to find solution. Great one!
June 10th, 2012 at 10:54 pm
The best way to deal with this is don’t install the software on the CD, just plug the mouse and keyboard in, the operating system will find the driver it needs and not give you the logitech BS software that nobody uses anyway.
If you installed the logitech software, DELETE IT
December 22nd, 2012 at 10:53 pm
You’re a saint. My first born is already in the mail.