Sunday, January 08, 2012

Caps, Scroll and Num lock status notifier for windows !

Have you ever needed to know whether or not your caps lock, scroll lock or num lock keys are enabled but cannot tell due to having no LED's on your keyboard?

Then you certainly need to check out and possibly install Keyboard Indicator. I have also used Keyboard LED but found that I didn't like that you weren't alerted when your caps / num / scroll lock were turned off so found this one instead which I think is the better option.

This is the best freeware (open source) version I could find. Why? Simply because you have so much customisation; i.e. you can tell it when to appear, what for and for how long to show on your desktop! Let alone set "opacity" (how transparent it is on your desktop).

This is compatible with Windows XP, Vista, 7 and modern versions of windows.

To install:

  1. Find the latest version (scroll to the bottom of the page link above)

  2. Download the zip file to your [drive letter] \ Program Files (Program Files x86 if on 64 bit Windows)

  3. Unzip the application using 7zip (or other zip application)

  4. This creates a folder called '[drive letter] \ Program Files \ KeyboardIndicator_1.5.0.0' (the version number maybe different to this one as the application may have been updated since this post)

  5. Go into this folder and run the application by clicking on 'KeyboardIndicator.exe'. Set all appropriate settings which should be self explanatory.

    I recommend setting the colours as follows: On the 'General' tab set the 'Back' colour as a dark blue and 'Fore' colour as yellow. I set the opacity to 60% as well. On the view tab the interval setting I set as 1500 (1.5 seconds before it disappears). I highly recommend ticking the box 'start with windows' on the general tab.
     
  6. OPTIONAL: I also recommend placing a desktop shorcut if you wish to have easy access to the program (right click on this file, select 'Send to ... > Desktop (create shortcut).
Done. Enjoy with hearts content.