I remap the Caps Lock key to be a control key on every computer that I use regularly. Here’s why.
- Caps Lock is a nearly worthless key taking up valuable real estate.
- I’m more likely to use Caps Lock accidentally than intentionally.
- I use the Control key far more often than the Caps Lock key.
- The Caps Lock key is in a consistent position on all keyboards but the left Control key isn’t.
Some people swap the Caps Lock and and left Control keys. I prefer to just disable the left Control key. On desktop keyboards, I map the useless Scroll Lock key to act as a Caps Lock key for those rare instances when I actually want to type a long sequence of capital letters.
KeyTweak is a convenient program for remapping a Windows keyboard.
On Linux, you can use the
xmodmap utility.The following commands disable the left Control key and turn the Caps Lock key into a control key.
xmodmap -e "remove Lock = Caps_Lock" xmodmap -e "remove Control = Control_L" xmodmap -e "keysym Caps_Lock = Control_L" xmodmap -e "add Control = Control_L"
See Dave Richeson’s comment below for Mac instructions.