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    Ongoing observations by End Point Dev people

    How to use the Caps Lock key as an Escape key on Windows, macOS, and Linux

    Trevor Slocum

    By Trevor Slocum
    April 17, 2023

    At sunset, the sky is a dark, fading orange above mountains which seen through layers of haze, making them appear blue. In the foreground, a lake with a large outcropping of land reflects the sky and mountains. At the bottom of the image much darker land is broken by a path of water travelling into the lake, reflecting orange, positioned directly into the center of the frame.

    On most keyboards, the Escape key is distant from the most common keys. In order to reach it, you likely need to lift your hand from the keyboard. This interrupts the flow of typing and, over time, may cause repetitive strain injuries.

    When using modal applications which require frequent use of the Escape key, such as the text editor Vim, shortening the distance your fingers travel to and from the Escape key helps prevent injury and saves time.

    After following the instructions below, you may need to restart your system in order to finish applying the changes.

    Windows instructions

    Download and install PowerToys, a set of utilities created by Microsoft.

    Open PowerToys and browse to the Keyboard Manager. Enable the Keyboard Manager and click Remap a key. Choose Caps Lock -> Escape.

    Note that this fix requires PowerToys to be running.

    macOS instructions

    Go to Apple menu -> System preferences -> Keyboard. If you have multiple keyboards, make sure your active keyboard is selected.

    Click on the Modifier keys button to open a popup dialog. Open the dropdown next to Caps Lock and select Escape.

    Linux instructions

    There are separate instructions for Linux depending on whether you are using X11 or Wayland. If you don’t know what these are, you are likely using X11.

    On Linux, after following the instructions below, it is still possible to toggle Caps Lock by holding Shift before pressing the Caps Lock key.

    X11

    Open ~/.xprofile in a text editor and add the following line:

    setxkbmap -option "caps:escape_shifted_capslock"

    Wayland

    Each Wayland compositor uses its own unique configuration format. The instructions below are for Sway. If you are using a different Wayland compositor, you will need to research how to specify keyboard options in the configuration file of your particular compositor.

    Open ~/.config/sway/config in a text editor and add the following line:

    input * xkb_options "caps:escape_shifted_capslock"

    You can see more options for changing Caps Lock behavior in the XKB rules file:

    grep -E "(ctrl|caps):" /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst

    Or, in the man page for XKB:

    man xkeyboard-config

    Conclusion

    These aren’t the only ways to make this swap. Furthermore, some prefer other key swaps, such as making Caps Lock an additional Control key. Let us know in the comments about your preferred fix!

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