1 yr. ago • 97%

Is numlock key actually useful?

I see no use for the numlock key, I'd rather just have the numpad on the whole time. Are there actually cases where it is useful or people who for some reason prefer their numpad turned off?

59 comments

I haven't used numlock in years but I remember that for certain games that you played with the arrow keys, I preferred to use the arrows on the numpad instead of the dedicated ones.

And according to Wikipedia, the reason why numlock exists in the first place is the fact that certain keyboards didn't have dedicated arrow keys, but did have a numpad. I guess numlock on full-sized keyboards is just a relic that keyboard manufacturers are schlepping around because it's cheap enough to produce and doesn't really hurt 🤷

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- You can still get some mechanical keyboards with numpads but not arrow keys, though since these are variations on compact layouts they tend to omit the numlock key as well.
  
  15
  
  Interesting. Most compact keyboards I've seen save space by removing the numpad, not the arrow keys. I assume you can emulate arrow keys by pressing some modifier key on those?
  
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I can be useful. If NumLock is turned off you can use 2, 4, 6, and 8 as arrow keys for example. Although with most modern programs you can easily rebind keys so it's more a thing of the past, like the "Pause" button.

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- A thing of the past? Pause is used a lot to pause games.
  
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  I have never seen pause used that way for modern games. Most of them just use Escape instead, with pause being left for lower-system things like the REISUB sequence.
  
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  "A lot"?
  
  Man, I've used F9 as a pause key more often than Pause.
  
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  I am an avid gamer and have never used that button to pause a game. Escape is the go to for that, no?
  
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I have a smaller keyboard that doesn't have dedicated arrow keys, or any of the home, page up, etc. They're all on the numpad, so numlock for me is very useful.

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It's a relic of the past. Old keyboards didn't have dedicated arrow keys and since many programs were only controlled by arrow keys rather than a mouse, having a num lock key was a good solution to the problem. But if you are still stuck in an environment where you have to navigate a lot with arrow keys, the num lock still comes in handy. Having Pg Up and Down and the Home/End keys nearby is super handy in this situation.

It's still useful for some old video games, especially for multiplayer where both play at the same time.

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There's an old game I grew up with called Castle of the Winds. You could also move using some other keys or the mouse, but for me my favorite way by far was using the numpad with numlock turned off.

I also used to use the numpad while playing Half-Life, as the person who introduced me to that game swore by remapping all the keys to the numpad.

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- Old games are pretty much the only use Ive ever seen. The keypad can be used as arrow keys, but with diagonal options and the ability to easily switch over to numbers. Nethack, for instance, is extra challenging without a proper numberpad.
  
  7
  
  vi keys for life
  
  2
- Damn I loved Castle of the Winds. Was actually just thinking about frying to see it I could play it again recently for a nice nostalgia kick.
  
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I have literally removed the NumLock keycap from all of my keyboards to make sure I don't accidentally turn it off. Never missed it.

I have also removed the F1 keycap. Never use it.

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- Lol I also remove the Num Lock key! I find myself accidentally pressing it too much and I just never want to use that function anyway.
  
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- Scroll Lock is the one that comes to mind as a safe removal.
  
  However, for me, the real useless AND inconvenient piece of shit I wish I could rebind as I want that space for something better is Caps Lock. Unfortunately, it's not that easy to do.
  
  2
  
  You should look into Kanata. It lets you remap the whole keyboard, same idea as QMK, except it's running on your computer instead of the keyboard itself.
  
  It can be a bit tricky to set up if you're not used to that sort of thing, but I managed to figure it out so if you have any questions feel free to ask.
  
  3
  
  Use autohotkey! I have a very simple solution for this, where the caps lock key is mapped either as a backspace key, or it minimizes the current window.
  
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  Swap caps lock and left control. It's the first thing I do on most of my computers, especially notebooks.
  
  The newer versions of Windows Powertoys from Microsoft makes it easy on Windows.
  
  Been easy on Mac and most Linux distros for years.
  
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  I've set my computer so that holding caps lock lets me type in Greek
  
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I can't even remember when I would've needed the arrow keys on the numpad.

My keyboard has also SysRq, Scroll lock and Pause/Break keys on top of the numpad, never needed any of them.

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It's useful if you enable Mouse Keys mode. Which is useful if you find yourself without a working mouse for one reason or another.

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How am I going to make an auto clicker then? With 5 and + held at the same time it keeps clicking really fast.

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- Mouse keys iirc
  
  3
I actually have a collegaue who uses the numeric keys as arrows and shit, he uses the NumLock pretty regularly.

He is the only one I actually know who does that, tho.

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An easy indicator to see if a computer is on / wake it up / see if the keyboard is connected / see if a PC has crashed.

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- Depends on the settings on the computer.
  
  I've seen some with USB ports powered when shut off, leave the numlock key lit.
  
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think of it more like a switch that makes that part of your keyboard multi-use.

You can buy keyboards that cut off that entire section if you don't use it.

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I think the numlock key is a hangover from the IBM XT computers (maybe even before that). Those keyboards didn't have the cursor keys and other key block. So, the numlock key was quite important.

I know, because I got my first PC during the PC AT days right before they moved toward ATX. That was a full size keyboard.

I am surprised it has stuck around so long. I understand in the transition from XT to AT that perhaps computer operators got used to using the numpad for navigation and muscle memory would be ruined. But, you know it's like 40 years on now. There isn't really a modern day reason to keep it.

But, happy to be proven wrong.

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I only find it useful on laptop keyboards. I like the numpad for entering numbers, and I also like having dedicated keys for stuff like Home, End, and Insert when browsing or editing. It saves space when you can double the numpad for both.

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Yes, there are arrows on the numeric keyboard which can be used for various reasons, also home and end buttons.

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no use whatsoever. this is an artifact from the days when the arrows, etc. did not exist as separate keys.

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For a full size, 104-key PC keyboard, everything that is mapped to the numpad is also somewhere else, and the keys are spaced out enough that you'd almost never need to turn off the numpad, so the key is just there for oddball legacy apps that do weird stuff. It was more important before IBM released the fully "modern" 101-key Model M.

For laptop keyboards and other reduced format keyboards that still include all or part of a numpad, it can still be useful. I actually use autohotkeys instead, but one of my budget mechanical keyboards only has the arrow nav keys and the rest are accessed by turning off NumLock.

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Never used it, really inconvenient. Stays off here and now you gave me an idea to rebind to something useful.

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Yes. On my keyboard there's no separate "end" key, it's part of 3 on the numpad, that key is very useful when using the terminal, because you don't need to wait for 5 years for the cursor to make it to the end of your command.

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- Ctrl-e in bash is move cursor to end. Ctrl-a is like home.
  
  5
  
  emacs?! set -o vi unless you just want to see the world burn
  
  (I'm kidding, I use the emacs shortcuts in bash, but vim is my goto text editor)
  
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- Reassign it to the NumLock key.
  
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  Chaotic neutral
  
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  I'm too lazy to figure out how to do that
  
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If you need to type numbers really fast, of course there’s no beating numlock. 10 key for the win. Of course that doesn’t get at why not just leave it as 10 key forever and skip the arrows. I know a lot of older programs… like msdos older…required the use of the arrow keys. And some people do prefer it for their cursor, and it doesn’t hurt to provide the option.

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I think it is still is useful, as some software still hasn't figured out how to turn on numlock automatically, and for a few applications number pad scrolling can be better than the arrow keys, but it is probably less useful than the scroll lock key at this point.

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10-key. Pretty useful for my job as a bookkeeper.

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- Right, but do you ever turn num lock off? I think the OP was trying to say it should just be stuck on because why would you use those arrow, home/end/pg up/etc buttons that kick in if num lock is off?
  
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I have literally removed the NumLock keycap from all of my keyboards to make sure I don't accidentally turn it off. Never missed it.

I have also removed the F1 keycap. Never use it.

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- @PlutoniumAcid Use F1 for keybindings of your own choosing. Unlike with NumLock, that actually works regardless of what kind of keyboard it is.
  
  @parowki_z_dzemem
  
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You can use ahk to force NumLock btw

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It depends on if you are a heavy mouse user or a heavy keyboard user and you are using a laptop with a restricted keyboard. Personally to scroll a document I prefer the buttons page up/down home/end. Often I also use those buttons to select big parts of a file that I want to copy. E. g. Shift+Ctrl+End form me is a useful combination. On the other hand I rarely use the numeric pad for numbers, but I also feel more comfortable typing with the left hand, I guess that a lot more people heavy keyboard user would prefer the numeric pad.

Yes the mouse is changing the habits for a lot of people, but the numlock may still be useful for some.

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Yes

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