How to Use the Keyboard to Move Your Cursor

One of the more interesting accessibility features of Windows 11 is the ability to use your keyboard to move your mouse cursor. This is especially helpful if your mouse stops working or if it’s battery-powered, dead, and you don’t have a replacement. Let’s go over how to turn Mouse Keys on and off, as well as how to use the numeric keypad to move your cursor.

Turn Mouse Keys On/Off

There’s a keyboard shortcut in all Windows operating systems to turn Mouse Keys on or off. Here’s how you do it.

Press and hold the Left Alt, Left Shift, and Num Lock keys at the same time. For reference, Left Alt and Left Shift are the Alt and Shift keys on the left-hand side of your keyboard.

This will open up a dialog box asking if you would like to turn on/off Mouse Keys. Click the Yes button to do so. If your mouse isn’t working, you can use the Spacebar or Enter keys to select Yes.

You can turn Mouse Keys off in the same way as above.

You can also access Mouse Keys through the Accessibility settings in Windows 11. Simply press the Windows key, type accessibility mouse settings into the field, and press Enter. Use your Tab key to navigate to the toggle switch, then use the Spacebar to toggle it on. You can then use the Alt + F4 shortcut to close the settings window.

How Mouse Keys Works

If Mouse Keys are enabled, they will only work when Num Lock is enabled. You can tell if it is by looking at the light on your keyboard. You should hear a high-pitched beep sound when you turn on Num Lock, which tells you that the keypad is now controlling your mouse cursor.

As for how you move the cursor, the key will be the 8, 6, 4, and 2 keys, which correspond to the directional arrows (up, right, left, and down). Each key will move the mouse cursor one pixel at a time.

If you’d like to stop using Mouse Keys, simply toggle it off using Num Lock once again.

And there you have it! You never know when Mouse Keys might come in handy, so be sure to keep this trick in mind for the future.