Turn your caps lock key into a delete key on your Mac 3/4/15

Unless you like to yell at people all day¹, you probably don’t use your caps lock key much. But since none of us are perfect, you do probably use your delete key² a lot. So, why not save your right pinky some strain, and replace your caps lock with a second delete key?

Here’s how you can do it on a Mac running Yosemite.

Step 1: Disable your caps lock key

Go into your System Preferences, select the Keyboard pane, and then click the button labeled Modifier Keys. There you can set your caps lock to No Action. You’ll likely want to do this for all your keyboards in the Select Keyboard dropdown.

Step 2: Download and install Seil

Now we need a way of re-mapping the caps lock key to delete. This is where the freeware app Seil comes in³. Download and install the version appropriate for your Mac.

Step 3: Configure Seil

Once you have Seil installed, go ahead and open it. The first option lets you reconfigure the caps lock key. Check the box to activate the caps lock key change, and set the keycode to 51. Once you’ve entered the keycode, it should be ready. You can quit the Seil app now⁴.

Taking it further

If your hands feel better after moving the delete key, you might want to give Colemak a try. In fact, I got the idea of replacing caps lock with delete from the Colemak FAQ:

Even if you decide not to learn [Colemak], I recommend remapping the Caps Lock key to Backspace. That change alone results in a 15%-20% reduction of finger distance on QWERTY. After experiencing the difference perhaps you’ll be more motivated to learn an alternative layout.

I haven’t taken the plunge and switched to Colemak. However, as someone with more than a passing interest in preventing RSI, I can see the attraction. Colemak, and the better known Dvorak layout should reduce typing strain by making your keyboard use more efficient than QWERTY⁵.