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Jonik
Asked: 2010-10-22 04:29:20 +0800 CST

How to get numpad out of "mouse emulation" mode?

  • 772

My numeric keypad has somehow got into a "mouse emulation" mode where the number keys just move the mouse pointer around (2 = down; 8 = up, 6 = right, etc). Anyone know how to make it work normally again?

None of the other numpad keys work either (I first noticed the whole thing when Ctrl + ÷ (numpad division sign) no longer produced "line comment" in IntelliJ IDEA). Toggling num lock doesn't affect this (though the indicator LED works as usual).

I'm using GNOME on Lucid Lynx (10.4).

10.04 gnome keyboard numpad

8 Answers

  1. Or you can press SHIFT+NUMLOCK

    • 13
  2. Best Answer

    From the menu, use

    System > Preferences > Keyboard

    On the tab titled "Mouse Keys" there is a check box to toggle "Pointer can be controlled using the keypad" .

    You can disable this behaviour there.

    • 6

  3. You can permanently disable this incredibly annoying keybinding by editing /usr/share/X11/xkb/compat/complete in superuser mode (ie, gksudo gedit /usr/share/X11/xkb/compat/complete) and commenting out mousekeys & accessx(full):

    // $XKeyboardConfig$
// $Xorg: complete,v 1.3 2000/08/17 19:54:34 cpqbld Exp $
default xkb_compatibility "complete" {
include "basic"
augment "iso9995"
//augment "mousekeys"
//augment "accessx(full)"
augment "misc"
augment "xfree86"
augment "level5"
};
    • 4

  4. In Ubuntu 12.10, to solve this problem you can follow the below steps:

    1. System Setting
    2. Universal Access
    3. Pointing and Clicking
    4. Turn off the Mouse key by clicking the Mouse Key (Control the pointer)
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  5. as root user, type the following command that will completely inhibit the feature:

    gconftool-2 --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory --type string --set /desktop/gnome/accessibility/keyboard/mousekeys_enable "false"
    • 2

  6. Apart from Shift+NumLock (bound to the corresponding action to enable/disable this mode), an additional xkbset utility can be used to control this from command line:

    xkbset -m

    Learned this tip from Enabling mousekeys.

    • 2

  7. Just a heads-up, in Ubuntu 12.04 (Unity) this "feature" can be enabled and disabled in the Universal Access dialogue under the Pointing and Clicking tab.

    • 1

  8. On my 20.04 I could only get out of that mode using the following command which has been kindly suggested here:

    dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/a11y/keyboard/mousekeys-enable true

    Maybe too many system upgrades and prior fiddling made it the only way out for me.

    • 0