Capslock is dead. Long live Capslock

TLDR: Disabled capslock’s native function and configured it to act as a “dropdown terminal” key.

The capslock key is very well placed. It sits below the ‘Tab’ key and above the ‘Left-Shift’. Why is it well placed? It is a big key (2 units generally), and is easily accessible with the pinky finger.

However, there is already a key whose function is the same as capslock: the left shift. The difference being that with capslock you have to press 2 times, the first one to capitalize and a second one to lowercase again. With shift, you have to hold it for the duration of your rant. I very seldomly write with capslock on, thus I have decided to make good use of the real estate that capslock represents: I configured it into another key.

It is very easy to change the function of a key and you can do it either via software or hardware. I chose to do it via software. Since you can make it function however you want, I chose to have it call a dropdown terminal. I am constantly using the terminal, so it is useful to have it easily accessible. You can do this by using xmodmap. Here is how I configured it:

In .xmodmap I have the following contents:

clear Lock
keycode 66 = F13

Which I then call by simply running xmodmap ~/.xmodmap on system-startup. Notice that the capslock key now acts as a “F13” key. Finally, I configure this new key to call my terminal:

bindsym F13 exec ~/config/.dropdown_terminal.py

This bindsym is an i3wm function. You can, however, do this in pretty much every window-manager/desktop-environment. The dropdown_terminal.py is a script I have mentioned in this post. That is all. Easy and useful.