Dec 19 2022 Remapping keys in windows

Today I learned about Powertoys,, a utility application from Microsoft.

Caps lock isn't a very useful key, but it occupies very valuable keyboard real estate, sitting on home row. Some programmers like mapping ctrl to the caps lock key. Some keyboards even have hardware settings to switch them. Personally, I find it awful for trying to hit ctrl-z, x, c or v.

But the escape key, I hit a lot. I've known MacOS allows mapping escape to caps lock, but the last time I looked for windows, it seemed like everything was registry hacks and shady applications.

But with powertoys, I feel good that it's an officially supported, first-party app. And it lets you map arbitrary keys, not just a few modifiers. Powertoys offers a lot other features (the stay-awake one seems like I'll use it on my laptop), but the keyboard remapping alone is good enough to get me on board.