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Does anyone here use a numpad? What for? I made my own macropad[1] but I struggle to find a use, the only thing I use it for is CAD shortcut keys. Any ideas are

• jiehong 7mo ago
  I've personally replaced keymacros by things like Alfred's workflows (or Raycast's): aka a universal command palette. It's usually very fast to type "cmd-space", and then type 3-4 letters to find the macro I want.
  • stavros 7mo ago
    Yeah, I use a similar utility, plus I've built a custom QMK-based keyboard that has extra shortcut layers. I think macropads might still be useful for per-app shortcut layers, but in practice I don't find myself using it that much.
• tmtvl 7mo ago
  > Does anyone here use a numpad? Yes. > What for? Inputting numbers. The number row is too wide and too offset on a staggered keyboard to really work for me. I'd be interested in trying a full-width ortholinear keyboard, but can't find any.
  • stavros 7mo ago
    Oh durr, I forgot about that. I have remapped tilde so when it's held down it turns the right half of my keyboard into a numpad, so I use that for numbers. I guess I was more asking if anyone uses macropads.
• opan 7mo ago
  I don't use a numpad, but a friend of mine swears by them for playing roguelikes. It makes it much easier to move diagonally in a single turn. If you play any games with keyboard and mouse, you could bind some letters/numbers from the right half of the keyboard and then place the macropad on the left so you don't have to take your hand off the mouse to hit anything. For another idea, you could bind pgup/pgdn or scroll wheel up and down for scrolling webpages, IRC backlog, etc.
  • stavros 7mo ago
    Hmm that's a very good use case, thanks! I'll keep it in mind for next time, I think it wouldn't have occurred to me if you hadn't said it.
  • tomjakubowski 7mo ago
    Same with MUDs: a numpad is a critical piece of kit for getting around those rooms with north/northeast/east style exits.
    • stavros 7mo ago
      True, but also thank god for speedwalking.
  • vunderba 7mo ago
    Roguelikes are a great use case. I used to play Castle of the Winds all the time with a number pad, Shift+7913 fast movement FTW.
• deleted 7mo ago
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• mememememememo 7mo ago
  As a 90s phone user where you text on one it feel like a fast way to type a credit card number or similar. Pretty rare use case with modern keychains and password managers though.
  • stavros 7mo ago
    Man, T9 was the best though.
• jasomill 7mo ago
  I do when I'm using a keyboard that has one, for numeric input, but I don't do this often enough to prefer it to the smaller form factor of a tenkeyless keyboard. My usual layout, left to right, is Magic Trackpad, tenkeyless keyboard, mouse on mousepad cut down to roughly the size of a Magic Trackpad (with a larger mousepad on hand for gaming and other precision applications).
• vunderba 7mo ago
  Quite a bit - I have a bunch of custom shortcuts for musical notation (adding dynamics, expression, etc.) for rapidly entering music into my notation software.
• thatguy00 7mo ago
  Yep, trying to type a long number on the top row is super tedious to me. I just use a layer under my right hand for 10-key.
• tom_ 7mo ago
  I have a number of AutoHotKey/Hammerspoon numpad shortcuts for arranging windows. In Visual Studio, on the suggestion of a colleague at my first job, I use Numpad + for copy, Numpad - for cut, and Numpad * for paste. (I've never managed to train my hand eye coordination to use these in any other program. Which is a bit of a shame, because they're actually pretty useful. Whichever side you mouse on, you can find some way of hitting them without much effort.) The numpad also comes in handy sometimes for typing numbers.
• jweather 7mo ago
  I have a similar sized macropad that I use extensively with AutoHotKey for application-specific shortcuts like clicking on buttons that don't have a keyboard shortcut, or scrolling two panes of a window simultaneously. All things that I could bind a key combo to, but I like having a dedicated button for.