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?

  • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
    5·
    2 years ago

    The Microsoft PowerToys Keyboard Manager tool should allow you to do this.

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/keyboard-manager

    You will probably need admin access to install it, however.

    Edit: Actually, apparently you don’t? I just installed it on my work PC here, and did not get any UAC prompts or anything. It can indeed reassign your caps lock key – I just tested this, and it works. (I mapped it to left ctrl.)

    • imaradio@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      I tried installing Power Toys a while ago but the version of windows is too old to support it.

    • imaradio@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Thanks I will do this!

      Does this first line mean anything? I didn’t install anything except the basic AH package:

      ;The keyboard hook must be installed.
    • imaradio@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago
      • I have small hands that makes certain key combos involving ctrl difficult/uncomfortable to reach
      • at home I have caps lock remapped and therefor I am constantly using it by muscle memory
      • Even before I had remapped it at home, I would sometimes enable it by accident which is annoying
      • in previous versions of windows (I think windows 8?) I could disable caps lock entirely in a system setting but it seems they have removed this option from more recent version
      • it’s right there
        • imaradio@lemmy.caOPEnglish
          2·
          2 years ago

          That’s interesting I didn’t know that. I used to share workstations with someone from indonesia who had what seemed like very strange habits of employing caps lock constantly. I assumed it was just a personal weirdsy but maybe it was due to use of caps lock in another linguistic context.

          However, I know for a fact that it doesn’t do anything I need. I’ve had it remapped for a couple years on personal machine without issues.

          Thanks for telling me though, because I will be sure not to fallback to the registry or another method that changes behavior system-wide. Would not want to prevent anyone else from using the device.

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
      21·
      2 years ago

      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.)

      • imaradio@lemmy.caOPEnglish
        1·
        2 years 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.

    • imaradio@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      Oh sweet if there was a native windows option that would be best.

      Tho I feel like I might have tried this and it didn’t work somehow. I will try again when at my workstation.