Remap Capslock – The Most Useless Key
Posted by Jon Lee in Efficiency, How-to, tags: Efficiency, keyboard, model-m, shortcuts, Thinkpad
The Caps Lock key on your keyboard is frequently renowned as the most useless key. Even the One Laptop Per Child laptops have dismissed the caps lock key in favor of a more ergonomic Ctrl key! Well perhaps it is not as useless as Scroll Lock but it is taking up very valuable keyboard estate in its current position. Amongst all keys in close proximity to a touch typist’s hand placement, caps lock is by far the least used (if typing correctly).
Anything caps lock does can be done by the shift key and more efficiently — except when you’re writing something in all caps, which should be quite rarely. Case in point, I had a friend that refused to use the shift key for reasons unknown. If he had to capitalize a letter, he would press caps lock, type the letter and press caps lock again to turn it off. Some would argue caps lock is important for the disabled with poor motor-control but Window’s “sticky keys” is a much better solution for them anyway.
What can it be remapped to?
- Esc
The escape key is a pretty useful key for certain applications (*cough* Vim) or for closing Windows and prompts. Since it normally requires removing the hand from its regular typing position, remapping it right beside your pinky seems pretty efficient! Also, the Ctrl-Shift-Esc combo is very handy and this makes it tons easier to press (don’t know what it does, try it out!). - Backspace
Just like the Esc key, backspace is fairly out of the way and hard to press yet is used very often. Makes a lot of sense to make it more accessible. - Windows Key
Personally, I have mine remapped to the Windows Key (yes another hated key) simply because neither my IBM Thinkpad nor my IBM Model M includes one. I use the Windows key mainly to show desktop (Win-D) or to open up a Windows Explorer window (Win-E). - Ctrl
Although the control key is very accessible, some people find it uncomfortable to press in its current position. - Enter key or Space Bar or Anything Else
What can be more fun than having Enter keys on both sides of the keyboard! Or if your thumb gets tired, you can start using your pinky to type spaces instead!
How to remap Caps Lock to another key
For Linux users (on an X environment like KDE, Gnome), it’s pretty easy to remap keys using the xmodmap command.
For Windows users, there are programs that will remap keys for you but if you’re not afraid to tinker with your registry, you can do this manually and it only requires adding one registry value:
- Go to Start->Run and type in ‘regedit’ to open the registry editor.
- Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout
Note: Keyboard Layout, not Keyboard Layouts! - Go to Edit->New->Binary Value and name it ‘Scancode Map’
- Now double-click and edit the value to the following, replacing ## ## with the scan code of the key you wish to map caps lock to.
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 ## ## 3a 00 00 00 00 00
The scan code for Windows Key is 5B E0, Esc is 01 00, Ctrl is 1D 00. Full list of scan codes and a more detailed tutorial is here.
- Reboot your computer and say goodbye to caps lock!
How often do you use the caps lock key? Got another candidate for the most useless key? Have you remapped caps lock to something else? Leave a comment!
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great post, i might have to put it to use!
Thanks Jon! I was looking for this for quite sometime.
Until you just mentioned that Win-D shows the desktop, I felt that the Windows key was the most useless. Very good tip…
[...] for a lot of tasks! Using a Thinkpad X41, I naturally don’t have a windows key but I have bound caps lock to it and find it invaluable doing everyday tasks. If you like this post, you can subscribe to my full [...]
Well that’s a small step what about a giant one? All the whole qwerty layout should be changed. The placements of the letters on this layout is designed NOT to type fast on mechanical devices in 19th century, to avoid possible corrosion. It’s been proven that with some other layouts like Dvorak you can type ~20% faster and it’s much more healty.
I’ve actually used Dvorak for a while but I couldn’t switch over completely. For one thing, all the regular shortcuts are messed up — like Ctrl-x Ctrl-c Ctrl-v are no longer beside each other.
Vim keys are also all messed up, hjkl are no longer in a row.
I only tried it for about a week and got really frustrated with my typing speed, maybe I should have stuck with it longer
My keyboard has all kinds of annoying keys on it. For example, I have a $ key above the right arrow and a € key above the left arrow that I am always hitting by accident.
What kind of keyboard do you have? An UK one?
I had a french keyboard for a while and a few keys were flipped .. very confusing!
How i can switch keyboard layout using “Caps Lock”? And how i can use “Caps Lock” led to indicate current keyboard layout?
On Linux it very simple.
I “remaped” my Capslock key to the Command key under Mac OS X. Dead simple to do though, no messing around with any config files or xmodmap. Its available as an option in System Preferences under Mac OS X.
[...] are ways to do this in Windows, and Apple of course makes it dead simple (go the Keyboard section of the Keyboard and Mouse [...]
I like caps lock, but on my Japanese keyboard with Japanese windows, caps lock is mapped to another function, so I have to press shift to get the caps lock function. Is there a way to go the other way round & map my caps lock back to caps lock?
Couldnt agree more. i think CAPS is no use at all. Well maybe to some it is.
there is a way without rebooting like autohotkey but easier:
http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Remap_CapsLock_or_other_keys_without_reboot_in_Windows
don’t forget Mac users too have the most useless key on their keyboards, man the repetitve strain injury was too much. Class action suit is in order.
for macs try KeyRemap4MacBook or DoubleCommand (but not both) and even mac users can finally have a useful key.
Mine is remapped to DELETE, ahh the comfort of having one of my most useful key at my finger tips.. Great.!
[...] a very simple registry hack to remap caps to control. Seriously, it’s floating all over the internet. Except, there’s a wrinkle–you need administrative access to edit the [...]