It’s Time for Caps Lock to Die | Hacker News Reader

It’s Time for Caps Lock to Die

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28 pointsdacoja32 comments

What a... strange battle to fight.

The author has a serious bone to pick with a keyboard key.

I would suggest that anyone who feels this strongly about their caps-lock key simply remove it from their keyboard so it can no longer be accidentaLLY ACTIVATED.

Edit:

Also,

>(Say, for example, double tapping the Shift key, like how it already works on your phone.)

Would be terrible for gamers - I already get annoyed with sticky keys sometimes.

Or simply remap it to whatever they like using one of many free utilities? Anyone who cares this much about it is expert enough to be able to do so.

Agreed, there are many things "wrong" with modern PC's, I don't think caps lock is one of them. I personally don't 'fly to close to the sun' and miss entire sentences of all-caps, because I don't look down when I type, I look at my screen.

Easier to just re-map the key to something useful than to adjust a whole industry to a single opinion.

Hey, I'm the author :)

I realize it comes across like I'm super worked up over something no one cares about, but I don't hate the key, I just think it's a waste of space on modern keyboards, and that we should collectively reconsider its purpose. Considering the amount of time we all spend on our computers nowadays, any little efficiencies on their input devices could have a pretty large impact.

I'm also someone who gets really passionate about bad design in everyday life and I have strong feelings about the way I think everyday things should be designed.

On my old laptop, I remapped the key to a new kind of modifier key and made the JKLI keys behave like ←↓→↑ keys when Caps Lock was pressed down. It sped up my casual text input a ton, and that was the first time I started really thinking about it more deeply. I did an HCI study during my undergrad to try and prove that an alternate use for the key could help people input text more efficiently, but it was inconclusive.

I also want to make a Mac app that would turn Caps Lock into Emoji Lock, where it would toggle between normal input, and emoji input. Something like this: https://i.imgur.com/Z5dDVUn.png

I know a lot of people on this site probably don't use emojis very often, but a ton of Mac users do, and the existing methods for typing emojis on macOS (and Windows) are still super awkward and clunky. Unfortunately I don't know how to code macOS apps and I've got too much on my plate right now, but hopefully sometime in the future I'll get around to making that.

And if I'm being 100% honest, I partially wrote this article so that if Apple does indeed replace the key on future keyboards, it'd make me look really good at predicting the future ;)

Anyway, thanks for your feedback.

I think Windows has a pretty decent emoji interface as of a couple feature releases back: Win+. or Win+; (the Windows key [or Super key if you prefer the Linux name] with either . or ; whichever feels more comfortable) brings up a palette that can be navigated via keyboard and/or searched by typing words (and/or clicked/tapped). Most recent feature update even added common kaomoji.

Also, for the macOS users, there's a great emoji picker interface: cmd+ctrl+space brings up a very similar-sounding menu where you can search by typing, or scroll through and click the one you want.

That's actually the one I was thinking of as being awkward to activate :) I love the picker itself but the activation method is pretty clunky in my opinion.

I wish I could just hit one key instead of having to simultaneously press three. I've been using Rocket for awhile now (https://matthewpalmer.net/rocket/) which kind of takes the Slack style ":emoji_name" format to the whole computer, but it's still kind of awkward to activate and has a lot of false positive triggers. (It really makes you realize how often you type colons in everyday computer usage.)

Nice, didn't know about that! I have a PC desktop and a MacBook but lately my PC has been getting dusty, so I have to admit I'm not super familiar with the latest on Windows. Thanks for letting me know :)

>I'm also someone who gets really passionate about bad design in everyday life and I have strong feelings about the way I think everyday things should be designed.

I can respect anyone who has a passion and follows through on it. Thanks for your article and reply.

I think the problem with "getting rid of it" is that someone will define a terrible "what it should be" and move other keys around.

Right now it is basically a user-defined key.

I redefine it as control on all my systems, which is wonderful as an emacs user.

As a programmer of C language, where macros are conventionally all-caps long strings, CAPS lock is really important for me.

I mean even as a designer when I’m doing mockups it’s extremely useful

Hah! "pylint" will complain about "constants" not conforming to the upper-case naming style. In some cases "constant" seems to mean simply "declared outside function scope".

I set up Emacs so Meta works on words and Super works on symbols. So I type_the_identifier_in_lowercase then type s-b to move the cursor to the beginning of the symbol, then type s-u to uppercase the symbol and move the cursor back to the end of the symbol. It works out to the same number of keystrokes as using caps lock, but is way more powerful since I can also transform all caps to lowercase just as easily.

A long time ago I ran anticapslock.com with articles and software about disabling/remapping the key.

The best achievement I did in the process was creating a software called clipcontrol, which turned the caps lock key into a clipboard control key.

So caps+X/c/v worked like cut/copy/paste Caps + 1-9 was history number 1-9 Then there was support for persistent clipboard entries, etc etc Even plugin support to do text formatting and similar :-)

I'm not sure if it still works on recent windows versions, I switched to Linux a long time ago and a Linux version is yet to be done

Anyway, I think caps lock should be a clipboard key as clipboards are an important part of many workflows.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/clipcontrol/

That's a fantastic idea!

Caps lock is still used by French people on the azerty keyboard since you need to press shift to access numbers.

I'm using an Anne Pro II, mechanical 60% keyboard. Capslock accesses a function layer, I've got vim-like hjkl arrow keys mapped, and some delete/backspace keys mapped to my home row. If you just tap the capslock key without hitting anything else on the function layer it works like a regular capslock.

When I'm typing something in a search bar I can just hit capslock+j/k and I'm cruising up and down the autocomplete suggestions. It's great for moving the cursor left and right in non-editor environments (and also insert mode).

I originally bought it for ergonomics, I absolutely love it now. Once the bindings became second nature it breathed new life into my capslock key usage. I would recommend it, or any similar programmable 60%, to anybody who likes to tinker with keymappings.

If someone agrees and wants to implement something like this easily - autohotkey lets you do this in Windows with a one line script.

CapsLock::Ctrl ; or some other key here

To leave yourself some flexibility on using capslock still by hitting shift+ caps to activate it, use

+CapsLock::CapsLock

CapsLock::Ctrl ; or some other key here

I map it to F13, which I then use as a combo key to give me a variety of media keys that my keyboard lacks natively.

Scroll lock is likewise mapped to F14 because that's another useless key.

That's clever, I beat my head against the wall a few times trying to force direct mappings to other functions.

As an alternative to the "remap caps lock to esc or ctrl" crowd, I'd like to suggest remapping to scroll lock. I don't need easier access to esc or ctrl, so I decided to pick a different key. Scroll lock doesn't really get used for anything important (in my workflow) and provides an extra key to use in bindings for your text editor or games. I've been using it for about a decade and it gives me a bit of additional utility for a key that I wouldn't otherwise use.

On a 60% and no idea where scroll lock lives (time to check the manual). But I've come to really prefer ctrl in place of capslock. I'm also somewhat of a madlad as I remap every game I play from wasd to esdf. This allows my pinky to use 'a' key for functions normally mapped to shift (like running in games), have two 'shoulder' keys (instead of q/e its qw/rt) and I can leverage the finder-key bumps for quicker hand placement. It costs a single 5 minutes per game but provides and overall more ergonomic (and consistent with touch typing) experience, in my opinion. There are also a few other benefits, but I won't go into them. Figured if I had the patience to learn/write emacs chords, I could do this much, and it paid off quickly.

I was convinced to try and decided that I like using Caps Lock as a left-hand Backspace myself. Nice to have one on each side, and that one is a much more convenient reach for your pinky.

That's a great idea! You've inspired me to try setting it to Delete, because it's a bit awkward to delete characters after the caret on Mac right now (FN + Delete is the only way I know how)

Ctrl-d deletes caracters forward on macOS. Super easy when caps lock is ctrl.

I bound it to esc to try to learn vim with a touch bar. Delete sounds like an really good use. Might try that.

Yeah, it's taking up space where the Control key should be.

I've permanently remapped my CTRL key to my Caps-Lock key. Not only does it prevent GNU Emacs from giving me carpal tunnel syndrome, but I find that the numerous keyboard shortcuts that use the CTRL key quickly become second nature when the CTRL key is easier in reach.

I'm uneasy that my brain spontaneously injected "Preach it, brother! Preach!" into my thoughts.

Caps Lock died a long time ago for me. I think manufacturers/OS vendors should clearly label and market it as the "free-for-all" key. Default it to NOP to avoid ACCIDENTAL OR INTENTIONAL CAPS LOCK. Map it to whatever you want, even Caps Lock if you like. Mine, it's been mapped to Ctrl for ages, just as the Most Holy IBM Model F keyboard has dictated from the ancient times.

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