Numpad workaround for small Keyboards

Date:

Recently I got myself a small keyboard. A Keychron Q1. With the numpad gone, the Keyboard takes up less space on my desk and typing feels smooth. But soon I encountered a small issue. Some programs and games use keys on the numpad. For example you can use the „+“ and „-“ key in Gimp to zoom in and out. Or in the game Factorio you use the same keys to change the brush size for you concrete or landfill. Yes the same can be achieved with holding the shift key and using the Mouse wheel but then I found the real issue. The alt codes for special ASCII symbols. Yes I use these maybe once every 6 months but it still bothered me.

Luckily Keychron keyboards are VIA compatible. This gives me to option to reprogram every keys function that I can access with the „Fn“ key. So I just reconfigured the Numbers 1-0 on the 4th Layer to represent the numpad keys and now I can access all the alt keys. For example ALT+FN+3 writes a ♥
Every key on my keyboard can now be assigned with a second function which makes me think if I should have gone for a 65% keyboard or even smaller.