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Comment by wffurr | Hacker News Reader

Or start remapping caps lock to escape, which is now possible in the keyboard preferences as of MacOS 10.12.1, which the leaked images are from.

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I genuinely don't understand why there is still a caps lock key on most keyboards.

Can someone fill me in on actual use cases of having this key still?

I have been binding caps lock to escape for many many years.

I map it to Control (emacs user vs. vi user probably)

When I mention doing so to non-programmers, people look at my like I'm from another planet.

I map it to delete, it's funny to see people try to use my keyboard, hahaha

I map it to control as well and I'm also a vim user.. (but I also use Tmux, so it's very handy!)

It's a political thing: if they replaced Caps Lock by Escape by default then emacs users would scream murder. If they replaced it with Control then vim users would probably start looting nearby stores.

And thus, the status quo is maintained.

But seriously, like with almost everything keyboard layout-related it's just there because people are used to it.

One of my favorite things: map caps to escape on tap, and control when used as a modifier. I've got it set up that way on my linux machine and it's amazing. I'm sure you can do it on OS X with Karabiner or something.

It's to keep first line support busy..

I'm still surprised when I see people using caps lock instead of shift for typing a single uppercase character (This being the keyboard peckers who still use one finger for everything).

The fact that you haven't had it enabled for years is probably why you can't understand its usefulness. It's just not part of your workflow because its not available. It does in fact provide a lot of value. As an example, entering uppercase alphanumeric codes is annoying without capslock (switching from holding shift for uppercase letters to remembering to let go of shift to enter a number really slows down entry).

That's not really an example of why something in all caps is useful, though.

The only time I've seen anyone using caps lock is in a call center where people think it's the proper way of entering data into a form (my opinion is it's totally not).

SOME PEOPLE NEED IT TO INTERNET PROPERLY.

I see this sentiment all over the internet but I don't really understand it. Not trying to be snarky but can you explain why you want the caps lock key gone?

I know personally I don't use it too often, but it's nice to have if I want to type in all caps which happens occasionally. Holding down shift with a pinky for a anything more than a few key presses can be a little uncomfortable so I appreciate the caps lock key.

MAKE PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET UNDERSTAND YOU'RE RIGHT AND THEY'RE WRONG

Assuming that you've not remapped caps lock already to something else like control.

You can have the best of both worlds with Karabiner. After remapping caps lock to Control, you can add a Karabiner setting to send Escape when you tap Left Control. Holding caps lock in combination with another key will still act as ctrl-<key>

I've remaped caps lock to control. I use vi and press caps-[ to achieve my escape to command mode.

why not something like jj or jk?

inoremap jj <Esc>

also, mapping the leader to spacebar is great

mapleader=" "

and finally

nnoremap Q @@

map the Q key to replay the last macro you used... much nicer than using @r or @g or whatever every time you want to replay the macro.

I tried mapping jj to esc, but even after a few days I couldn't really get used to it. Always drove me crazy when it would switch modes when I just intended to type 'jj' as a variable name in loops. At least it got me to use more meaningful names!

Your latter suggestions are brilliant, I'm going to steal them right away.

If you like the space bar leader you might want to try spacevim or something like that. (I switched to spacemacs and I love it... Vim is a great style of editing but the plugins are bad and feel broken and half assed. Spacemacs fixes that by combing the best of vim with the best of Emacs. That feels dirty to type but it's true.)

You could map it to both 'jk' and 'kj' and then you don't have to worry about the order of the keypress, just press both 'j' and 'k' together.

I like that suggestion. Thank you!

Try mapping kj instead of jj. I use jj and jk often enough (quaternions, don't you know) but kj is a really obscure sequence.

Wait, what? That's amazing! I've been waiting for this feature forever!

It's been available forever.

You need two apps: Seil and Karabiner, both made by the same person. Check out this guide: http://brettterpstra.com/2012/12/08/a-useful-caps-lock-key/

Sadly neither of those work in macOS 10.12: https://github.com/tekezo/Seil/issues/68

It works (kinda) with Karabiner Elements: http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2016/remapping-caps-lock-ke... -- Edit: but it's very nice to see this supported by default :)

>which is now possible in the keyboard preferences as of MacOS 10.12.1, which the leaked images are from.

And remapping it to backspace still isn't possible without additional software (Karabiner Elements) :/

But then I'd have to give up mapping caps lock to control.

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