Razer Kraken V4 RGB Won't Turn Off on PS5: Real Fix

There is no PS5 setting, headset button, or menu that turns off Chroma RGB on the Razer Kraken V4, and that is not a bug you can patch away yourself. The lighting is controlled entirely by Razer Synapse, which only runs on Windows and Mac, so the moment the headset is running on a PS5 — wired, over Bluetooth, or through the 2.4GHz dongle — there is no software present to tell it to stay dark. It falls back to its default lighting effect and stays there for the whole session, which is exactly why battery life takes a hit.

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Why PS5 can’t switch it off

Chroma on the Kraken V4 isn’t firmware-resident in the way a mouse’s onboard DPI button is. Every color, effect, and on/off state lives in a profile that Razer Synapse writes to the headset, and Synapse’s supported platforms are listed as Windows 10/11 and a macOS preview build — nothing console-side. PS5 has no equivalent companion app for Razer audio hardware, so when the headset boots without Synapse in the picture, it reverts to its factory lighting state instead of remembering “off.” That is confirmed directly in a Razer Insider thread from a Kraken V4 owner whose lighting behaved unpredictably the moment they moved between a PC session and a PS5 session on the same headset.

How much battery it’s actually costing you

Razer’s own spec sheet for the Kraken V4 puts playtime at up to 70 hours on the 2.4GHz connection with lighting off, dropping to up to 35 hours with Chroma running — the RGB roughly halves your runtime. On a headset you’re charging once and expecting to last a week of evening sessions, that’s the difference between charging every few days and needing a top-up mid-week.

The workaround that actually removes the battery hit

If you’re using the 2.4GHz dongle or Bluetooth, the RGB draw comes straight out of the internal battery. Switch to the included USB-C cable instead and plug it straight into the PS5. Razer’s product listing for the Kraken V4 confirms the USB-C connection doubles as a charging line, so the headset draws power from the console while you play instead of the battery. The lighting still won’t turn off, but the “affecting battery life” part of the problem goes away completely, because there’s no longer a battery being drained in the first place.

If you already disabled it in Synapse and it came back anyway

This is a separate, well-documented failure on top of the PS5 gap. Multiple owners on Razer Insider report that turning Chroma brightness to zero in Synapse doesn’t survive a power cycle: the lighting resets to default the next time the headset is switched on, even on PC. One user’s account of the issue is blunt — “the lights wont work on the Ps5, its so bad you cant have any lights its just black” after adjusting settings in Synapse, describing the opposite failure where lighting broke entirely rather than staying off. Others in a thread specifically tracking the deactivation bug confirm the reset-on-reboot behavior has persisted across firmware version v1.2.3_r1, meaning at least one update shipped without fixing it. A second thread covering Bluetooth mode documents the same pattern and the closest thing to a workaround: setting the color to pure black with brightness at zero in Synapse before disconnecting, which mutes the lighting until the next reboot rather than permanently. There is no button combination on the headset itself that overrides this — Razer Insider threads checking for one come back empty, and the manual doesn’t list one either.

Is Razer going to fix this

Nothing in Razer’s support channels currently points to a firmware update that adds PS5-side lighting control, and the deactivation bug on PC has already outlived at least one firmware release without a fix. If you’re waiting on an update rather than a workaround, treat that as unresolved rather than pending — the honest answer right now is that this needs a fix from Razer, not a setting you’re missing.

If you’d rather not deal with RGB battery drain at all

The Kraken V4 is still a sound pick for PS5 if you’re fine tethering it during long sessions or accepting roughly 35 hours between charges — the drivers, mic, and multi-platform support don’t change based on which cable is in the box, and the battery hit is now a known, work-aroundable quantity rather than a mystery. But if decorative lighting battery drain is specifically what you’re trying to avoid, two other paths are worth naming. The wired Kraken V4 X carries the same Chroma hardware and the same lack of PS5 control, but since it has no battery, there’s nothing for the lighting to drain — it’s a real option if you don’t need to walk around the room. The Sony PULSE Elite sidesteps the problem differently: PlayStation’s own documentation describes its status light as a brief color-coded blink for battery level, not a continuous RGB loop, and it’s rated for up to 30 hours because it was never built to run a lighting show in the first place. That trades away Chroma entirely and caps battery life lower than the Kraken V4’s lights-off number, so it’s the right move only if you specifically don’t want decorative lighting on a PS5 headset — not if Chroma’s color-cycling is why you bought Razer.