Working Notes: a commonplace notebook for recording & exploring ideas.
Home. Site Map. Subscribe. More at expLog. — Kunal

Configs Keyboards

I like to map
- Capslock to Ctrl (for emacs, and general computing)
  - This is pretty common, and generally easy to configure
  - Uses my left pinkie
- Right Alt to Escape (for vim, and quick exiting)
  - I've never seen anyone else do this so far
  - Uses my right thumb
The most consistent way I've found to achieve this is with setkeycodes
- Works across Arch, Fedora, Ubuntu and different window managers
- First attempt:

#!/bin/sh

# showkey --scancodes
# showkey --keycodes

# Capslock -> Left Ctrl
setkeycodes 3a 29
setkeycodes ba 29

# Right Alt -> Escape
setkeycodes e038 1
setkeycodes e0b8 1

# https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Map_scancodes_to_keycodes

Automating this with systemd:

[Unit]
Description=Customize keycodes on boot

[Service]
Type=oneshot

# Capslock -> Left Ctrl
ExecStart=/usr/bin/setkeycodes 3a 29
ExecStart=/usr/bin/setkeycodes ba 29

# Right Alt -> Escape
ExecStart=/usr/bin/setkeycodes e038 1
ExecStart=/usr/bin/setkeycodes e0b8 1

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Mac also has something similar that makes this possible

hidutil property --set '{"UserKeyMapping":[{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x7000000e6,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000029}]}'

cat > ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.local.keyremap.plist << 'EOF'
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.local.keyremap</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/bin/hidutil</string>
        <string>property</string>
        <string>--set</string>
        <string>{"UserKeyMapping":[{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x7000000e6,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000029}]}</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>
EOF

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.local.keyremap.plist