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Comment by fmajid | Hacker News Reader

What does Apple have against the Escape key? That's a deal-breaker right there.

Cmd + . actually acts as Escape key on iPadOS. It’s not a replacement for a physical escape key, but I don’t find it too hard to adopt.

Wow, thank you. This isn't very discoverable but will be super useful for me.

What about on MacOS? The trackbar escape key is super flaky...

There's a setting to convert caps lock into escape.

Their new models are reverting that design.

Ctrl + [

I am always baffled, when the keyboard + iPad issue is brought up, perhaps my use-case is unique. I use a Apple A1314 Keyboard, which has an ESC key, it is Bluetooth enabled with decent key travel, and cheap to acquire. It is just a matter of popping the iPad Pro 10.5 (2017) on an after market stand and/or propping it atop a stack of books if required, it is a good solution and works well, even for a touch-typist like myself.

However, I would appreciate better support for MX Master as opposed to the current solution via Accessibility.

I use the Magic Keyboard myself, or the Kanex MultiSync https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MZ2TKIR/ that has support for 3 devices and keyboard backlighting. What I really want is a proper mechanical keyboard with good BT support, hopefully the Keychron K6 I have on order will be the ticket.

What would the escape key do in iPadOS though? There isn't one on the on screen keyboard, never has been.

Clear the current field. Close the current dialog.

How else are you supposed to use VIM?

Ctrl [

Support outside vim (actually a terminal) is a bit less reliable.

It's a lot more widespread than I would have expected. It seems to work most places where I've tried it.

With the caps lock remapped to escape.

Inside SSH sessions, e.g. Emacs.

iPadOS 13.4 will let you remap the useless capslock key to esc:

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2020/02/06/ipados-13-4-hardwar...

I prefer to remap it to Control_L, that's where I have it in muscle memory. But I also need a Meta key for Emacs.

You could put esc on control and control on caps?

Completely off-topic, but for everybody that maps Caps Lock to esc, how do you ctrl-tab? That's what my Caps Lock is mapped to, and I cannot understand how ctrl-tab can be any sort of comfortable to reach on a standard layout?

The best solution I've found is mapping caps lock to control on hold, and escape on press.

You can do this with Karabiner on OS X, ililim/dual-key-remap on Windows, and alols/xcape on Linux.

> The best solution I've found is mapping caps lock to control on hold, and escape on press.

wow. just wow.

I haven't mapped my caps lock to anything else, but on my Mac I ⌘-tab, which is pretty natural for my thumb and fourth finger given the position of the ⌘ key next to the space bar.

To be honest it never really bothered me once I realised that a lot of iPad apps let me rebind the caps lock key to work as escape. I'd just love for them to make that option available globally like it is on the Mac.

The forthcoming beta of iOS adds global keybindings for caps lock.

Not only that, but also native KeyUp and KeyDown events[1] without needing a JavaScript hacks! This means keychord-type shortcuts are now also possible in an app that wants to use it (e.g. an IDE, if someone is building one), or app-specific key remapping (e.g. Blink.sh, which currently uses JavaScript to detect and remap the key)

[1]: https://twitter.com/johnsundell/status/1225177084965851137

People who value the Escape key were never going to make an iPad their primary computer anyways.

Speak for yourself. I value the Esc key and I spend at least 4 hours a day on my iPad, more than on my Mac or Linux laptops.

I value an Escape key (being emacs/evil user) and use iPad Pro as my primary computer for the past 2 years. The trick is you just use a real keyboard with it (HHKB-BT in my case) :-)

How do you know if someone uses a mechanical keyboard?

Don't worry, they'll tell you.

(I hailstormed this message on Cherry MX Blues.)

Hey, HHKB uses Topre so technically it’s not quite mechanical either! ;-)

Still envious. :) I have a HHKB Lite PS2 sitting around somewhere. Every now and then I think about digging it out.

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