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Comment by mdszy | Hacker News Reader

Every keyboard I've ever used I've remapped the caps lock to control, whether in hardware (like on my pok3r) or in software (on my work computer). I have a hard time ever using a keyboard without this remapping done.

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I've gone down this route several times. I've moved Esc, Ctrl and Win (or whatever you call it, Meta?) to the CapsLock position. But for some reason my left pinky just doesn't like that spot. It's a slightly awkward angle, and I use Esc/Ctrl/Win so much that having any of them in that spot tires out my pinky.

One row up or down is fine. But home row far left is hell. Maybe it's simply because my hand grew into it over several decades. Instead, I use CapsLock to lock my screen.

Capslock is an Escape key for me because I use Vim a lot. I've heard lots of tmux users map it to Control and then configure tmux to use Ctrl+a as the activation mapping, which sounds very useful too.

I have “fd” set to return me to normal mode. I picked this up from Spacemacs, and I actually like it a lot. I even set it up in IntelliJ.

Now my capslock is Ctrl. I find that combo to be particularly effective for me.

A default vim mapping is CTRL+[ I use that a lot as it requires the smallest motion of my hands. The fd seems pretty cool as that's even a smaller change. How do you set that in your .vimrc?

I use to use “jk” for this. I stopped because several vim emulators, evil specifically, did not support this.

Evil does support this, I use it every day. (Or rather, evil-escape is a plug-in I use that makes this setup very simple)

I set my keyboard to tap Capslock for ESC or hold for CTRL. Seems like the best of both worlds.

Agreed. For anyone else wanting to try this:

linux: github.com/alols/xcape windows: github.com/ililim/dual-key-remap mac: karabiner

as always, Miley Cyrus is right.

I use this mapping in my current setup and find it really useful.

Seems like only a small win for such a large key. I type a lot of math and have been happy mapping Caps Lock to ”Change keyboard layout to Greek” (macOS). It gives me quick and effortless access to the full greek alphabet.

Big win if you use emacs.

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