Remap your Caps Lock key to be more Useful!

July 18, 2014Sublime TextEdit Post

I'm a big keyboard shortcut user. After a while you may find that you are running out of easy keyboard shortcuts.

One little trick that many developers do is to remap their capslock key to something a little more useful.

In my case, I remapped my capslock key to open up the Divvy window manager.

Whatever you use it for is up to you, but don't just let a perfectly good key sit dormant! Watch the 5 min video below or follow the instructions. Happy keyboarding!

https://youtu.be/hkga5p8nDHM

Disable the Capslock key

First thing you'll need to do is open System Preferences → Keyboard → Then click the Modifier Keys button in the lower right.

Set your capslock key to No Action and repeat for every keyboard you have attached in the "Select Keyboard" dropdown. If you are on a laptop with an external keyboard you'll need to do this twice.

Remap the Key

Now that Caps Lock is disabled, we need to remap it to another key. When you press a key, the OS sends a KeyCode to the program letting them know what key was pressed. I made a little site to help you with this in JavaScript: http://keycode.info.

To do this, we need to use a program called Seil (previously PCKeyboardHack). Download, install and open it.

Check the first box that says "Change Caps Lock" and set the keycode to be one that you do not use and ideally a key that you do not have. A popular choice here is 80, which maps to F19. Unless you have a huge keyboard, you probably do not have an F19 key.

Now when you press your Caps Lock key, they system will interpret this as a press of the F19!

Now you get to choose which program you want to map Caps Lock to. I chose Divvy:

It works with any program that accepts a hot key including Alfred and Slate.