How to enable NumLock on Ubuntu Login Screen

Introduction

In this post we discuss how to enable both NumLock and tap-to-click for the login screen of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Steps

The GSettings configuration tool will enable us to do the task via 2 commands, although it requires the gdm user privilege.

1. Get gdm user privilege in a terminal window.

   1. Open terminal by either pressing Ctrl+Alt+T or searching for ‘Terminal’ from software launcher.

      

   2. Run command to get root privilege (type your password when it prompts):

       sudo -i
      

      

   3. In the terminal, run command to allow gdm to make connections to the X server:

       xhost +SI:localuser:gdm
      

      

   4. Finally switch to user gdm in this terminal via command:

       su gdm -s /bin/bash
      

      

2. Run the command to enable NumLock automatically on the login screen:

    gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.keyboard numlock-state 'on'
   

   

3. To enable tap-to-click, run the following command in the same terminal:

    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.touchpad tap-to-click true
   

   

NumLock and tap-to-click should now be enabled on your next startup.