Number lock indicator or disable

[JimWeymouth]

Recently installed Mint 21 xfce.
I never use number lock and on a laptop keyboard I find it a nuisance. Ideally would like to disable it
In Cinnamon I had installed an indicator in the panel, but have not been able to do so in xfce.
Panel does not seem to give an option to download new applets or extensions.
Any ideas?

[lsemmens]

Are you looking to prevent it from engaging all together? Or do you just want to turn it off or on at boot? BIOS might do what you want there. In Cinnamon you can set it to pop up a change in settings if you hit the num lock (or caps lock) buttons and/or audible indicator, too. I'm sure that XFCE has a similar setting.

[JimWeymouth]

First preference is to disable numlk altogether.
Second preference is to have an indicator in the panel to show status of Numlk.
My Acer Aspire Bios does not provide for a Numlk setting on startup, but Mint settings/keyboard/layout does give this option.
Further ideas most welcome.

[billyswong]

Indicating NumLock is doable in Conky. It takes some learning curve to configure to your wishes but the facility is there.

Some relevant config that you may copy https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic ... #post-7450

Which position you want the indicator to dock into? What size you want the text to be? One liner or two liner for both numlock and caplock? I may be able to help setup the config file if you need a hand. Personally I found it possible to overlap it on top of taskbar, and thus always visible without being too intrusive.

[magnus7]

Run this command in terminal and restart the computer. It will disable Num Lock altogether:

Code: Select all

sudo sed -i '23s|.*|//key<NMLK>{[Num_Lock]};|' \
/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/pc \
&& sudo dpkg-reconfigure xkb-data

Run this command to enable Num Lock again:

Code: Select all

sudo sed -i '23s|.*|key<NMLK>{[Num_Lock]};|' \
/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/pc \
&& sudo dpkg-reconfigure xkb-data

[zcot]

As for adding plugins, right-click -> Panel -> Add New Items There are some default plugins. You can install xfce4-goodies package to add more, and you can also manually install others. (apt show xfce4-goodies for full info list)

I searched a little bit and there is at least a few variations of a GenMon (Generic Monitor) plugin solution, that plugin is contained in xfce4-goodies.


I liked the looks of this one, a panel plugin, it used to be available in the extra packages, I guess not used anymore.

project page is there: https://github.com/oco2000/xfce4-kbdleds-plugin

I ran those commands:

Code: Select all

apt install git build-essential xfce4-dev-tools libxfce4panel-2.0-dev libxfce4ui-2-dev
mkdir source
cd source
git clone https://github.com/oco2000/xfce4-kbdleds-plugin.git
cd xfce4-kbdleds-plugin
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
sudo make install

Now you can use the panel plugin functionality add/remove/rearrange items.