How to disable all lights?

I need to use our Raptor for star parties. We bring our telescopes out into the desert so we can observe under dark skies. Many of the objects we observe or photograph are very dim and we need absolute darkness to see them. Car/truck lights, interior and exterior, are strictly prohibited. Any vehicle lights instantly kill your eye's dark adaptation and it take 20-30 minutes to get fully dark adapted after even glancing at a vehicle's parking lights or interior lights.

Our 2019 Raptor has all sorts of interior and exterior lights that come on when the doors are open or closed. I have read every word of the owner's manual and fiddled with all the buttons and cannot figure out how to turn off all these lights. I need to open the truck's doors and tailgate frequently during a night of observing and have to disable these lights. We do use very dim red filtered flashlights when we need to see something but we are careful to minimize and shield other observers from even this super dim red light. The Raptor's lights are WAY too bright and will prevent me from attending any start parties.

How can I turn these lights off and keep them off?

Thanks for any ideas.

I think you're gonna need to start pulling fuses.

Don’t the Exploders come with a dark mode for police? I’m not sure what all is turned off but maybe it’s a start.

How about:

• Dome light override switch on in the overhead console - prevents lights from coming on when the doors are opened
  
• The dimmer switch all the way down - don't think it's possible to turn off the productivity and sync screens completely
• Headlight knob in OFF position

negative cable on battery - reconnect when it is time to leave.

goblues38 said:

negative cable on battery - reconnect when it is time to leave.

Click to expand...

Yay! The Occam's Razor approach - the simple solution is the best solution.
(Be sure to bring a flashlight so you can see to reconnect the battery cable.)

I believe forscan can be used to setup the police style dark mode

Thanks for all the ideas.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that disconnecting the negative battery terminal on one of these new computerized vehicles re-sets everything that requires voltage to maintain data to factory default. If so that would be a real pain to lose any user settings and things like transmission learn? I am also leery about pulling fuses since I don't know what unintended consequences that might have. I live on regular computers but don't know ****** about vehicle computer systems. My old trucks did not have this issue, there was a switch that turned unwanted lights off.

It's amazing that Ford does not give us a simple way to turn off all the lights.

Read thru the forscan page , it will tell you everything needed for programming dark mode. I haven't tried dark mode but i believe the sync system still lights up. Forscan is easy

Turn on dark car, everything will be off.