Remapping CapsLock <-> Control


If you are a frequent user of the Ctrl Key - specifically the Left one, then you know that it just isn’t in the right place. Or possibly you are in the school whereby you accidentally hit the CapsLock key whenever you type an ‘A’. In either case, I have found some resources that enable you to remap your modifier keys.

On MacOSX: uControl - Also has some nice other features such as virtual scroll wheel, good for laptop users like myself.

On Windows: Mucking about in the Registry is one way to do this, there may be utilities, but you can simply add this to the Registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Control\\ Keyboard Layout\\Scancode Map set to a binary value: (make sure to backup this branch of the registry first, I haven’t tested this.) 00000000 00000000 03000000 3A001D00 1D003A00 00000000

On Linux: A couple ways I have found are to add this line to your X server config file: Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:swapcaps" apparently it is in there but commented out in the default. There is another way that will let you do it in the console is: echo 'keycode 58 = Control' | loadkeys

Now (X)Emacs will be so much easier to use.

2003-10-09 11:11 I have been quite successful in getting the Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:swapcaps" route to work. Learning to deal with a swapped Ctrl and Capslock is a different story altogether. The loadkeys method didn’t work for me - FYI

Written by Colin Bate