

- Caps lock wasd karabiner elements how to#
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- Caps lock wasd karabiner elements software#
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I became so dependent on it that I decided to design a custom key cap set for my first mechanical keyboard from WASD Keyboards to match my Karabiner Elements settingsĪs you can see in the demo below, this modification enables me to navigate the cursor and edit code / text without ever having to leave home row: I made loads of customizations to simplify common operations. This seemed like a powerful idea for reducing key strokes, and after a bit more searching I discovered Karabiner Elements for mac. Somewhere along my searching, I came across articles about people who “re-mapped” their keyboards so that some key presses would trigger other events. Needless to say, I immediately started searching for a mechanical keyboard to replace my crummy old Apple keyboard. But it wasn’t just aesthetically better - I was able to type at a faster speed and with fewer errors when using a mechanical keyboard. There is something about the combination of aural and tactile feedback you get when typing on a keyboard with mechanical switches that makes the typing experience just… better. Curiosity got the best of me, and after trying out his keyboard for a few minutes I immediately understood why people use mechanical keyboards. One of my first roommates in graduate school was a remarkably fast typist and used this loud, clacky mechanical keyboard (I had to wear earplugs or listen to music to get anything done when he was typing).

Apply the Complex Modificationįind the Karabiner icon in your menu bar and go to Preferences.Figure 1: Me back in 2011 reading about mechanical keyboards. Save the file and put it in the ~/.config/karabiner/assets/complex_modifications/ folder. Create a Complex ModificationĬreate a new file called custom-capslock.json and paste the following text into it: It is very flexible, you can even set different keys to act differently depending on the keyboard you use, set different profiles for various uses cases and more.
Caps lock wasd karabiner elements software#
Karabiner is software that allows to remap keys on your keyboard.
Caps lock wasd karabiner elements install#
Go to the official website and install Karabiner. We will use Karabiner to map CapsLock to Escape and Control.
Caps lock wasd karabiner elements how to#
This post explains how to do it on a Mac. But Tab is used heavily these days, so I decided to not change it.Īnother solution that I saw was to overload the CapsLock key, making it act as Escape when quickly pressed and as Control when held longer or pressed in combination with any other key. One solution was remapping Tab to Escape and CapsLock to Control, just like it used to be back in the day. I had to put Escape and Control closer to where they used to be. Source.Īfter learning this, it all suddenly made sense to me. Note the positions of Escape and Control keys. Bill Joy used one of these when he created vi. Bill Joy, who created vi (predecessor of Vim), used a keyboard that had Escape key where modern keyboards have Tab key Control key used to be positioned where CapsLock is today.ĪDM-3A computer terminal. It turns out that back in the day, Escape and Control keys were positioned differently from today’s keyboards.

I decided to figure out why and also try to solve this inefficiency. These keys are located quite far from the home row and typing Escape or any combination involving Control seemed very inefficient to me.

Typing in Vim without moving hands around works, with few exceptions: Vim heavily uses Escape and Control keys. You can even get Vim-inspired keyboard-only navigation for a browser. Some examples of plugins include P圜harm (which I use), Visual Code Studio and Sublime Text. One of the goals of using Vim is to be able to do very complex and powerful editing solely on the keyboard, without a mouse, and also without moving your fingers from the home row of the keyboard.Īdditionally, if you want to try Vim yourself, you don’t need to switch away from your current editor, you can simply install a Vim emulator and give it a try. I quickly fell in love with its efficiency and power. I recently started using Vim, and I don’t regret it. Make your use of Vim more efficient Background: Why You Should Give Vim a Try
