Powertoys: Lock the numeric keypad to always and forever use numbers

[titoBouzout]

Summary of the new feature/enhancement

The numeric keypad has two states, use like numbers or use like idk navigation and idk what else. I wanna just use the numbers and I want it to never ever again change to anything else than numbers. Is very annoying it keeps changing.

Proposed technical implementation details (optional)

Just lock it in the numeric keypad state and prevent any state switch, forever. Thank you!

[crutkas]

OMG YES!

[titoBouzout]

I would like to expand and give some reasons for this:

1. The very obvious one, most people expect that thing to just enter numbers on the screen, if you press and no number is seen and the cursor moves weird then you are into problems.

2. The other that isnt that obvious, people that don't speak English does some keyboard gymnastics with ALT+NUMBERS to type some characters that aren't currently on the keyboard. Like ñ @ etc.....

3. Developers do something similar to the second point, for example Spanish keyboard has the special keys > < to the left of the Z but English keyboards don't have it. So if you use an english keyboard(like most imported[sic] laptops this days) with a Spanish setup you have to resort to stuff like ALT+62 and ALT+60. Dont make me tell you what you have to do to type regular expressions like ^ [] { } etc......

4. This is a new reason for me, my keyboard just broke, so the 7 key(Numeric keypad one) is not working properly, whenever I hit it, it drives me crazy because I never know if I turned ON Num Lock on or not as the key misbehave! And thats why I entered this issue..... lol

[bzoz]

It looks like there is no Windows way to lock the num-lock key. We can, however (at least I think this should work):

• get the current NumLock state and if needed toggle it. There is even MSDN example of exactly this.
• use keyboard hook to intercept and ignore all NumLock key presses.
• unfortunately, if PT are not running as admin, we won't be able to intercept NumLock keys in elevated apps. We should probably test the NumLock state from time to time and restore it if it was changed.

This is a great thing for a first-time contribution. A new, separate, small powertoy.

[titoBouzout]

Well, here is a temporal AHK script courtesy of @boredofnames

#NoEnv
#InstallKeybdHook
SetNumLockState, AlwaysOn

[Lexikos]

unfortunately, if PT are not running as admin, we won't be able to intercept NumLock keys in elevated apps.

If PT utilized the uiAccess="true" attribute in its manifest (and met all of the requirements for that), it would be possible for PT to intercept keystrokes destined for elevated apps when PT itself is not running as admin. The requirements and effects of this attribute are documented under Security Considerations for Assistive Technologies.

[jmahlers]

If the key remapper supported mapping a key to nothing, this functionality could be built into the existing module.
I suppose it matters whether the goal is to make the numpad always output numbers or to stop Num Lock from actuating.

Right now if you attempt to select none, there is a popup stating "Shortcuts must contain an action key". If instead selecting none just intercepted the keypress, I think that'd be a clean solution.

I haven't contributed to open source before, but I've looked at the contributor's guide and I'd be interested in trying to implement that.

[Jay-o-Way]

Can't you just break the NumLock key out of your keyboard?

[htcfreek]

Well, here is a temporal AHK script courtesy of @boredofnames

#NoEnv
#InstallKeybdHook
SetNumLockState, AlwaysOn

Did this also prevent Numkock from state change while booting up a VM with Windows 10?
Can the user enable NumLock within the VM when the state change is blocked on the host?