Tip of the Week: Control Your Mouse with Your Keyboard (Really)

Have you ever heard of mouse keys? It’s an accessibility feature of Windows 11 that lets you control your mouse cursor using the keyboard. It’s helpful for when your mouse stops working, or if the batteries die and you don’t have another you can use. Here’s how you can make the most of mouse keys for your Windows 11 PC.

How to Turn Mouse Keys On or Off

To turn on mouse keys, you can use the following keyboard shortcut (which should work for all versions of Windows operating systems):

Press and hold the Left Alt, Left Shift, and Num Lock keys simultaneously. The Left Alt and Left Shift keys are the Alt and Shift keys found on the left side of your keyboard.

You’ll see a dialog box open asking you to turn on/off mouse keys. From here, just click Yes. If your mouse isn’t working, you can navigate to the button by using the Spacebar or Enter keys.

The process above can also turn off mouse keys.

To access mouse keys through the Accessibility settings of Windows 11, you can press the Windows key, type accessibility mouse settings into the field, and press Enter. From here, use the Tab key to navigate to the toggle, then hit the Spacebar to activate it. You can use the Alt + F4 shortcut to close the settings window.

How to Use Mouse Keys to Move Your Cursor

When mouse keys are turned on, you use the Num Lock key to enable them. You can tell if Num Lock is on by looking at the light on your keyboard. When you hit the key, you should hear a high-pitched beep sound, which is your sign that the keypad is controlling your mouse cursor.

You’ll control the cursor by using the 8, 6, 4, and 2 keys. These correspond to the directional arrows of up, right, left, and down. Each key moves the mouse cursor one pixel in the given direction.

To turn off the mouse keys, hit the Num Lock key again.

Pretty neat, right? Now you have a backup plan just in case your mouse stops working.