Remap Caps Lock to Escape and Control
(This is part of a larger series on finding your footing on Arch Linux.)
Goal: use the caps2esc utility to make the Caps Lock key act like the Escape key when pressed alone and act like the Control key when pressed in combination with other keys.
Motivation: pleasant and ergonomic access system-wide to the very useful escape and control keys and a better Vim or Emacs experience.
References:
Procedure
The caps2esc utility allows you to remap Caps Lock to Escape and Control at the level of the libevdev library—just above the kernel—so this solution works both in the Linux console and in a graphical session of the X Window System.
Here’s what to do:
Installation
Install the caps2esc package from the Arch community repo:
# Install caps2esc
sudo pacman -S interception-caps2esc
This should also install the interception-tools package as a dependency.
The interception-tools package contains an input device monitoring program called udevmon, which we will use shortly to capture Caps Lock and Escape key presses.
Configure udevmon
Create the configuration file /etc/udevmon.yaml (if necessary) and inside it add the following job:
- JOB: "intercept -g $DEVNODE | caps2esc | uinput -d $DEVNODE"
DEVICE:
EVENTS:
EV_KEY: [KEY_CAPSLOCK, KEY_ESC]
Explanation (click to expand)
This udevmon job runs the shell command intercept -g $DEVNODE | caps2esc | uinput -d $DEVNODE in response to presses of the Caps Lock and Escape keys, which are identified by the names KEY_CAPSLOCK and KEY_ESC;
udevmon will set the $DEVNODE variable to the path of the matching device (a virtual file somewhere in the /dev directory) as needed.
The shell command uses the intercept program to grab the Caps Lock or Escape key’s input device, pipes the key event to the caps2esc program (which implements the Caps Lock to Escape/Control logic), and then pipes the processed output back to a virtual key device using uinput.
(You can read through Interception Tools/How it works for details.)
Tip: using caps2esc in the above udevmon job will make Caps Lock works as Escape and Control, and also make Escape work as Caps Lock.
If you want the Escape key to still behave as Escape, you can replace caps2esc with caps2esc -m 1, which uses the caps2esc “minimal mode” and leaves the Escape key unaffected (see caps2esc -h for documentation).
You now just need to start the udevmon program, which we will do using a systemd unit.
A systemd unit for udevmon
Create the systemd unit file /etc/systemd/system/udevmon.service (if necessary) and inside it add the contents
[Unit]
Description=udevmon
Wants=systemd-udev-settle.service
After=systemd-udev-settle.service
# Use `nice` to start the `udevmon` program with very high priority,
# using `/etc/udevmon.yaml` as the configuration file
[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/nice -n -20 /usr/bin/udevmon -c /etc/udevmon.yaml
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
This service unit starts the udevmon program with very high priority (nice lets you set a program’s scheduling priority; -20 niceness is the highest possible priority).
Make sure the path to uvdevmon in the ExecStart line (e.g. /usr/bin/udevmon) matches the output of which udevmon.
Then enable and start the udevmon service:
# Enable and start the `udevmon` service
sudo systemctl enable --now udevmon.service
# Optionally verify the `udevmon` service is active and running
systemctl status udevmon
At this point you should be done—try using e.g. <CapsLock>-L to clear the terminal screen (like you would normally do with <Ctrl>-L).
If the udevmon service is enabled, the udevmon program should automatically start at boot in the future.