How to Change Num Lock Default Settings on macOS Terminal

by Rian

I suspect this is yet another “tabs or spaces” question for developers, but I believe there is a silver lining for all —we want consistent UIs. I want my numpads to work as number pads throughout. There are only few cases when I need it to be something else, be it may directional keys, application keys, or etc.

On macOS, the default behavior for number pad is numbers (i.e. Number Lock on). What is bizarre, however, is that, on Terminal, the default is Num lock off. In other words, whereas the numpad is inputting numbers on all the other apps, on Terminal, it’s insistent on it being not numbers. For the life of me, I don’t understand why Terminal does this.

The setting for Num Lock behavior in Terminal is in: Settings > Profiles > Advanced, uncheck Allow VT100 application keypad mode”.

It does have the description of what it does in fine print, but again, I would have set it to follow whichever that is default behavior of macOS. Had I wanted it to behave differently, I would have set it manually.