From Dull to Lit: Upgrading the Suzuki Swift’s Lightning Buttons

If you’ve ever driven a 2005–2010 Suzuki Swift at night, you might have noticed something a little frustrating — those three buttons on the left side of the steering wheel are completely invisible in the dark. No backlight, no glow, nothing. You’re basically guessing whether you’re hitting the headlight beam height adjuster, the illumination cancel button, or the fog light button. Not exactly confidence-inspiring when you’re fumbling around at 11pm on a rainy motorway.

I’ve been mildly annoyed by this since I got the car, but it never quite made it to the top of the to-do list. That changed when I decided to wire in a new set of LED DRLs — and suddenly I had a reason to actually dig into that corner of the dashboard.

The DRL Project That Started It All

The DRLs I’m fitting aren’t your typical strip lights. They’re a three-function unit, handling daytime running lights in white, front fog light duties, and sequential side indicator functionality all in one clean housing. Wiring something like that in properly means you want matching, well-organized controls — and staring at three blank, unlabeled buttons in the dark just wasn’t going to cut it anymore.

So when hunting for OEM-style replacement buttons for the Swift, I found the perfect ones on AliExpress. And they fit absolutely perfectly — we’re talking flush fitment, same plastic finish, same clicking-sound when pushing in- and out and they plug straight into the original wiring harness connectors without any modifications. No splicing, no adapters, just plug and play. On top of that, the push and click feel is spot on — identical to the OEM buttons, so there’s no sense that anything has been swapped out at all.

The Easiest Win: The Fog Light Button

If you’re only going to swap one button, make it the fog light button. It is, without a doubt, the simplest upgrade you can do on this car. Find the right OEM-style replacement on AliExpress, pop the old one out, plug the new one in, and you’re done. Thirty seconds of work and you suddenly have a properly backlit fog light icon glowing at you from the steering column like it should have from the factory. It makes finding the other buttons in the dark a lot easier too. Genuinely satisfying for a couple of coins and almost zero effort.

The Mystery Button — and the Wiring That Came With It

The headlight beam height adjuster button is where things got more interesting. I replaced it with what I can only describe as a mysterious on/off icon style button — subtle, almost factory looking, but with a completely different purpose. That button now controls the DRL’s, toggling the DRLs from their default constant white output over to constant amber, effectively turning them into a set of always-on corner lights.

Swapping the button itself? Takes about a second. The wiring behind it, however, was a different story entirely. Getting everything properly integrated — making sure the toggle reliably switches the DRL output, plays nicely with the rest of the lighting circuit, and doesn’t cause any weird conflicts — took a fair amount of time , trial-and-error and lots of patience. It’s the kind of job where you think you’re almost done about four times before you actually are. Rewarding when it all comes together, but don’t let the simplicity of the button swap fool you into thinking the wiring side is equally straightforward. It isn’t.

The One That Stays Dark

The illumination cancel button — the one that switches your dashboard display between bright and dimmed — is the only one of the three that I left as-is. I actually use this one more than I expected, but it’s really nice to be able to darken the displays when you have a long drive in the dark. A backlit replacement for that specific button just isn’t something I could track down, so for now it stays original and unlit in the dark. I might add a funky custom backlit icon later on, but for now everything else around it looks so much better that it’s easy to live with.

Small Upgrades, Real Difference

This project started as a practical necessity and turned into one of those satisfying little rabbit holes that makes you enjoy a car more just by tidying it up. The fog light button swap is something any Swift owner can do in minutes. The DRL wiring is a proper weekend job if you know what you’re doing, more on that later. The result for now — a set of functional, backlit, good-feeling buttons that actually make sense at night — is absolutely worth it.

Sometimes the smallest changes make the biggest impression.