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Thursday, August 13, 2015

swapping caps lock and control keys

from http://www.kodiva.com/post/swapping-caps-lock-and-control-keys
I test it on Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10.

Works in: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7


In our opinion this is the best way to swap the control and caps lock keys in Windows because you don't have to rely on any external program and the registry edit works 100% perfectly (for the paranoid). 

Why should one bother changing the caps lock and control keys, what's wrong with the control key where it is? After extensive testing, our conclusion is that - if you use the control key a lot (like in Emacs or Vim), then you should definitely swap the control and caps lock keys as it's extremely ergo-dynamic to have the control key in the home row.
  1. Click Start -> Run
  2. Type: regedit, and click OK
  3. Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> System -> CurrentControlSet -> Control -> KeyBoard Layout
    Note: KeyBoard Layout, and not KeyBoard Layouts
  4. Right-click: Keyboard Layout, and select New -> Binary value
  5. Rename: New Value #1 -> Scancode Map
  6. Right click: Scancode Map -> Modify
  7. 0000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
    0008  03 00 00 00 1d 00 3a 00
    0010  3a 00 1d 00 00 00 00 00  
    0018
    
  8. Close regedit and restart your computer