Kung Fu Kung Fu

Fujian White Crane Kung Fu

Zope Zope

What I have and am doing with Zope

Photos Photos

Photoalbum, both old and new.

Receptsamlingen Receptsamlingen

In Swedish only. About my "Collection of Recipes" website.

Contact me Contact me

My contact details and how to contact me.

  Mobile version of this page Mobile version of this page


 

Disable Caps Lock in Linux

caps, caps lock, uppercase, xmodmap, caps_lock, capslock, /etc/bash, bashrc, .bashrc, bash.bashrc

21st of October 2004

I never use the Caps Lock button. Never. The only time I "use" it is when I accidently press it and start typing things in UPPERCASE. To disable it in Linux all you have to do is enter this on the command line:

 $ xmodmap -e "remove lock = Caps_Lock"

To set this permanently, just stick the above line in your ~/.bashrc file (or /etc/bash.bashrc if you're root) so that it looks something like this:

 if [ "$PS1" ]; then
    # Disables the bloody CapsLock button
    xmodmap -e "remove lock = Caps_Lock"
    ...
 fi


Comment

Anonymous - 25th October 2004  [«« Reply to this]
must say that a i love your work. Once i tried to sleep with caps lock, but he was too tight i'm afraid.
Anonymous - 17th March 2006   [«« Reply to this]
Yeah, that is great for vi
marc - 20th October 2005  [«« Reply to this]
thank your for this wonderfull tip.
peter - 26th October 2005  [«« Reply to this]
Cool! That rotten CAPS LOCK was driving me crazy!
Roar Granerud - 24th March 2006  [«« Reply to this]
Wonderfull. Utterly wonderful. Now I only need to replace the physical button that I threw away yesterday. Death to CAPS LOCK
Caps Lock Sucks Goats - 8th May 2006  [«« Reply to this]
Thank you thank you thank you. This rocks big time. NO MORE LOOKING LIKE SOME POWERPOINT-USING MORON!
Anonymous - 18th July 2006  [«« Reply to this]
Many thanks for this tip...can't tell you how many times I've boned something up b/c of the friggin' capslock!
Peter - 26th September 2006  [«« Reply to this]
JUCHU!!!!! DRECKDING!!!! SCHEISSE CAPSLOCK ENDLICH WEG!!!
Mike - 3rd October 2006  [«« Reply to this]
Awesome! Thanks.
RANDY J. ROGERS - 29th November 2006  [«« Reply to this]
WHY THE ATTACK ON CAPS-LOCK? I COMPOSE ALL MY CODE AND CORRESPONDENCE IN CAPS SO THAT I AM MORE EASILY UNDERSTOOD AND GET THE ATTENTION I DESERVE. I APPLIED YOUR SILLY PATCH AND NOW I MUST HOLD DOWN THE SHIFT KEY WHENEVER I TYPE. WHAT A PAIN!
Larry Phillips - 29th December 2006  [«« Reply to this]
I love it! After applying your line in my .bashrc, I went looking for a way to disable the Num Lock key, wanting it to always be in numeric mode. I could not find any way to do it, but I did discover that you can do the same thing by using a line something like..

xmodmap -e "keycode 79 = KP_7 KP_7"

This doesn't disable the Num_Lock, but it doesn't matter.

Use "xmodmap -pke" first, to check which keycodes are relevant.
Cedric - 10th December 2007  [«« Reply to this]
Thank you for this tip. I however wanted to let caps lock do the same as shift. This did the trick for me:
xmodmap -e "remove lock = Caps_Lock"
xmodmap -e "add shift = Caps_Lock"

I've linked to this page from my homepage:
http://home.tiscali.nl/cedric/Linux/Software/linux-trics/linuxtricsindex.html
NicoLarve - 11th January 2008  [«« Reply to this]
Just G.R.E.A.T. !
... As I used to remove the caps lock keys on my keyboards !
I can now restaure them to their original places !
Nick Ring - 17th February 2008  [«« Reply to this]
Good work!

Alternatively, for the vi/vim users, turn your Caps Lock into an Escape key. Now you can switch modes without any stretching off the home row.

Add the following to ~/.Xmodmap

remove Lock = Caps_Lock
keysym Caps_Lock = Escape

and the following to ~/.bashrc

if [ "$PS1" ]; then
xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap
...
fi
buccia - 17th February 2008  [«« Reply to this]
edit xinitrc not bashrc. no need for checks there
hosiawak - 18th February 2008  [«« Reply to this]
For Emacs's users: it's better to swap CTRL with Caps Lock, to do this, just put:

Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:swapcaps"

inside Section "InputDevice" of your xorg.conf
InYourBase - 19th February 2008  [«« Reply to this]
If you use KDE, go to Control Center-> Regional & Accessibility-> Keyboard Layout-> xkb options, click "Enable xkb options" and there are some options under "Ctrl key position"
Anonymous - 13th April 2008  [«« Reply to this]
So cool! So nice to get rid of the blasted caps lock (especially for someone like me who cannot type (blindly) and hence cannot see what (s)he's typing. So nice :-)
Anonymous - 13th April 2008  [«« Reply to this]
And it carry's over to my rdesktopped Windows window. So much value for so little work :-)
 
Name:
Email:
hide my email address.

Your email address will be encoded to prevent email-extraction spiders from reading it so you won't get spammed if you decide to show your email address.