[Windows] KeyStatus 1.00

[Little John]

Hi all,

some time ago, I bought some notebooks for our office. Overall, they are very good. But unfortunately they do not have a light to indicate whether the Num Lock key is on or off. This can easily lead to accidental input errors. The purpose of my program “KeyStatus” is to display the current status of the Num Lock key and/or the Caps Lock key in the notification area of the Windows taskbar.
KeyStatus is a 64-bit program for Windows. It has been tested on Windows 10 and 11.

   Example with dark icons: Num Lock and Caps Lock on
   Example with light icons: Num Lock and Caps Lock off



Thanks to ChrisR for code for a low level keyboaed hook, and thanks to Axolotl for code for making icons visible in the notification area.

License: Free for private and commercial use.
Download from my website

Bug reports, suggestions for improvement etc. are welcome.

[idle]

That's a good idea. I often cludge Caplocks on. Will try it in rhe morning

[Little John]

I hope the program is useful for you.

[OldSkoolGamer]

Thanks for this, our newer notebooks don't have the Caps lock either and it's annoying. Was looking to do something similiar, but now I don't need to.

[Kuron]

That's a good idea. I often cludge Caplocks on. Will try it in rhe morning

I have that issue, too. It was suggested to me to glue a thumbtack to the caps lock key.
Generally a dollop of super glue dropped from a toothpick puts an end to capslock issues for me. In all my years, I have never intentionally hit or needed a capslock key.

One thing I love about the Chromebook is no capslock key.

That said, this is a handy utility, as my lappy with a numpad, I always forget to turn on the numlock. One day, I need to figure out how to set it so that it is always on. Nice to have an indicator as to the status. Thank you, Little John.

[Little John]

Thanks to both of you for the feedback! You are welcome.

Generally a dollop of super glue dropped from a toothpick puts an end to capslock issues for me. In all my years, I have never intentionally hit or needed a capslock key.

I also can't recall ever having pressed the Caps Lock key intentionally. I only press it accidentally.

One day, I need to figure out how to set it so that it is always on.

That's a great idea
It shouldn't be too hard to add these options to the KeyStatus program:
[  ] Keep Num Lock always on/off
[  ] Keep Caps Lock always on/off

First I want to release the official version 1.00, based on the current beta version.
But this is excellent stuff for version 1.10.
Thank you very much!

[Kuron]

Thanks to both of you for the feedback!

You are welcome.

I also can't recall ever having pressed the Caps Lock key intentionally. I only press it accidentally.

A leftover from old typewriters that was handy on typewriters, but IMHO useless on computers. I often do not look at my screen when typing something long, I only notice I accidentally hit caps lock after I got a paragraph or two typed and its all in caps.

It shouldn't be too hard to add these options to the KeyStatus program:
[  ] Keep Num Lock always on/off
[  ] Keep Caps Lock always on/off

There is an old program called Numlocker that handles Num, Caps and Scroll. Not sure how they do it, but am sure there is a registry setting for each.

[Little John]

KeyStatus 1.00 released

Changes

• small change of the text in the “Settings” dialog
• minor internal tweaks
• slightly improved documentation
• improved setup