Would you recommend using Brett’s Karabiner hack to make Caps Lock function as a Hyperkey or use BTT’s method.
What are the tradeoffs?
Personally I prefer Superkey. There is a license fee ($16 IIRC) but there’s no fiddling around with Karabiner.
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The same developer of Superkey provides the free Hyperkey app, should one not need the extra features of SuperKey.
That said, I use Karabiner and have had no issues with it.
As to tradeoffs, if you already have Better Touch Tool then there is no need to add another app to the mix. If you don’t then there is the cost over the free options. And then one of the free options, Karabiner, has a steeper learning curve than Hyperkey, but can do more. Only you can decide if the “more” is of value to you.
Finally, of the two paid options, you would need to evaluate if the functionality of either is worth the cost to you.
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I have mine flashed onto my mechanical keyboard with VIA.
Used to use Karabiner before I got the new keyboard. It has an easy option to add the Hyper key, but I think I dropped it when it required fussing with SIP (that might’ve been temporary for a past macOS release).
This isn’t something you should need to pay money for, but there’s lots of paid software that can handle this function. If I were connecting my Apple keyboard right now, I’d do it in Keyboard Maestro because I don’t have BTT.
“fussing with SIP” is not required when using Karabiner. So it seems it was indeed temporary.
I use Karabiner because it just works, where both BTT and Hyperkey had issues on my Mac.
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Exactly the same experience here, Karabiner has worked all the time. The other two I had issues with.
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Same here. Hyperkey/Superkey are both dead simple but gave me issues from time to time. BTT felt like overkill. The only issue that I have since installed KE is waiting for my keyboard and mouse to reconnect if my m1 MBA has been sleeping for a few days, and I’m not even sure that’s related to KE.
I don’t mean to hijack this thread but I’m a little confused using any of these tools. I fear this is an insanely dumb question.
If you change the Caps Lock key to a hyper key, what happens if you want to type a word (or more) in all caps? Do you have to hold down the shift key constantly?
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The apps typically have a setting where, if you press Caps Lock without using it as the hyper key, i.e., you release it without engaging another key in combination with it, then it toggles Caps Lock on and off.
You can also remap Caps Lock to a different key on the keyboard that you don’t otherwise use. Or you should be able to use an app like BTT to toggle Caps Lock on and off when you double press one of the shift keys.
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Thank you! I tried Karabiner a long time ago and never realized that. When I got a new computer, I abandoned the hyperkey.
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If you are not using any of these apps right now, I would try hyperkey.app to start. It’s free and lightweight, and, while it’s not working 100% perfect for me, I’ve found it’s still better for this purpose than either Karabiner or BTT.
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No hyper key nor caps lock here! I always found caps lock to be a disaster waiting to happen from accidental invocation! And as my main keyboard is so old it doesn’t have a Windows/Command key I map the caps lock key to be my command key.
YES, I HOLD DOWN MY SHIFT KEY CONSTANTLY BUT NOT THAT OFTEN. AND IF I WANT A WHOLE SENTENCE, PARAGRAPH, OR EVEN DOCUMENT TO BE ALL CAPS, THERE IS USUALLY A MENU ITEM THAT DOES THIS.
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My, why did I not think of that moment. Though, I do use the laptop on it’s own sometimes.
Thanks! I didn’t know that. I use caps lock enough that I’ve been reluctant to use the caps lock key as a hyper key, but I may try it now. Then again, I stopped using Karabiner because it disabled the caps lock light on my MacBook. Wonder if that’s been fixed…
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One way to find out! 
I use the hyper key to trigger Keyboard Maestro macros. For example, when I do Hyper+G in either Word or PDF Expert, it zooms to “Fit Page” by typing the particular keystroke combination for that app. I’ve got a dozen like that (plus one that’s more complicated, it enters case numbers for my cases from a Keyboard Maestro conflict palate).
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Those are great examples!
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That’s one of the reasons I prefer Karabiner Elments above the other tools…
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Do you mean that you like that it disables the caps lock light