Hi, I’m the developer of Capslox. Counting its predecessor, Capslock+, this is my twelfth year working on it. Capslox has become one of the tools I rely on most, and I’d like to share it with people who might get something out of it too. If you’d also rather keep your hands in the main typing area, Capslox is a good fit for you.
Capslox started with a simple idea: turn Caps Lock into a modifier key, like Ctrl or Shift, so it can be combined with other keys. That lets you move the cursor, select text, bring up a window, and do other everyday things without leaving the main typing area. It was built first and foremost to make text editing easier.
The name is a play on “Caps loss”: Caps Lock is no longer just Caps Lock — it becomes a more useful modifier. The “x” in Capslox can also stand for caps-*, meaning Caps used together with another key.
These days it goes beyond changing Caps Lock. You can make any key a modifier, create shortcut sequences, and use different keymaps in different apps. It works on both Windows and macOS. You can build your own keymap from scratch, but it also comes with a default one that has been refined over the years and is meant to be useful right away. I’d recommend giving that one a try.
The default keymap mostly covers common text operations. The ones I use most are:
caps-e/d/s/f: move up / down / left / rightcaps-i/k/j/l: select up / down / left / rightcaps-w/r: delete backward / forwardcaps-cmd-1..0/caps-1..0: bind a window / bring it to the front (on Windows, usecaps-alt-1..0to bind it)
A lot of small decisions went into the default layout. For example, cursor movement is on E/D/S/F rather than W/S/A/D, the usual game controls for up / down / left / right. When you’re writing, your fingers naturally rest on A/S/D/F rather than in those game-control positions. E/D/S/F keeps the movement keys closer to that typing position, instead of shifting your whole hand one key to the left. Putting them on the left hand also means that, much of the time, you can move the cursor with one hand. With H/J/K/L, you would need your left hand on Caps Lock and your right hand on the movement keys.
There is also a game-like interactive tutorial to help you get comfortable with the default keymap quickly.
And if the defaults do not quite fit the way you work, you can take things further:
- Turn any key into a modifier and combine it with other keys. For example, HHKB users could use Tab in the role Caps Lock has in the default layout.
- Use keymap layers that you switch manually or have Capslox switch automatically when a particular app is active.
- Create shortcut sequences: for example,
caps-q w(presscaps-q, thenw). Related shortcuts can share the same first step, which makes them easier to remember. - Bind a shell command, or other actions, to a shortcut.
That’s a quick introduction to Capslox. If it sounds useful, you can try it from the Capslox website. I’d also be happy to hear what you think or discuss it in the community.