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Windows: remap caps to control (work computer) (lemmy.ca)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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At work I have a Windows PC. I don't have much personal experience with Windows which is why I am asking.

I want to remap the caps lock key to function as a control key. Ideally, on a per-user basis as sometimes other people use the workstation and I don't want to confuse them.

Was able to install Auto Hot Key. A test script worked. However I couldn't find working instructions about how to do this specific remapping. Example scripts I found seem to have some conflict between v1 and v2 of AH.
I don't have admin access however I could probably ask for something, but it would have to work immediately without a lot of fooling around. I will not be granted admin access to try a bunch of things til I find something that works.

What's the best way?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I don't see how it would be a problem unless you reassigned it while caps lock was enabled, in which case you would have to reboot (or temporarily revert your remap) to turn it off.

I can think of precious little software that actually requires caps lock for anything, and otherwise for normal typist tasks you can just use shift. I never use caps lock for anything, personally. (Ditto with num lock. My keyboard has a full number pad and a full set of arrow/insert keys. There is no reason for my number pad to ever not be a number pad.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I was asking because it is actually a problem for two reasons, one is that capslock has more states than other keys, plus it is more complicated to tinker with via AutoHotKey, they even documented it nicely ~~buuut.. the official method did not work for me — I just tested it.~~

~~I did it in a hurry so there might be “me” problem somewhere too.~~

Okay, it works.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

At home, once in a while caps lock turns itself on somehow. I have a shell alias to fix the problem:

UNCAPS='xdotool key Caps_Lock'

Should this happen at work I was thinking to either temporarily disable the application that is doing the remapping, or use some sort of onscreen keyboard to inactivate the caps lock.