Map capslock to control in windows 10

Question

In windows 8 I used to remap my capslock key to control using the registry script

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,1d,00,3a,00,00,00,00,00

After having upgraded to window 10, this does not work anymore. How can it be done?

Answer 1

Did you remember to re-boot? Seems to work fine for me, just like in 7 and 8.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,1d,00,3a,00,00,00,00,00

Answer 2

In case anyone needed this done via PowerShell:

$hexified = "00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,1d,00,3a,00,00,00,00,00".Split(',') | % { "0x$_"};

$kbLayout = 'HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout';

New-ItemProperty -Path $kbLayout -Name "Scancode Map" -PropertyType Binary -Value ([byte[]]$hexified);

Run it as Administrator and reboot.

Answer 3

You can use SharpKeys to map any key to any other key in Windows 7, 8, or 10. It's much easier and cleaner to do than to modify the registry yourself.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

I use the following to send CTRL for the CAPS LOCK key, send ALT for the CTRL key, and send CAPS LOCK for the ALT key. CTRL is to the left of "A" where God intended it, ALT is below SHIFT, and the utterly useless CAPS LOCK key is safely tucked away where I have to break my wrist to hit it.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

; The hex data is in five groups of four bytes:
;   00,00,00,00,\    header version (always 00000000)
;   00,00,00,00,\    header flags (always 00000000)
;   04,00,00,00,\    # of entries (3 in this case) plus a NULL terminator line.
;                    Entries are in 2-byte pairs: Key code to send & keyboard key to send it.
;                    Each entry is in LSB, MSB order.
;   1d,00,3a,00,\    Send LEFT CTRL (0x001d) code when user presses the CAPS LOCK key (0x003a) 
;   38,00,1d,00,\    Send LEFT ALT (0x0038) code when user presses the LEFT CTRL key (0x001d) 
;   3a,00,38,00,\    Send CAPS LOCK (0x3A) code when user presses the LEFT ALT key (0x0038) 
;   00,00,00,00      NULL terminator

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,\
                   00,00,00,00,\
                   04,00,00,00,\
                   1d,00,3a,00,\
                   38,00,1d,00,\
                   3a,00,38,00,\
                   00,00,00,00

Answer 5

This is the script to swap CTRL and CAPS LOCK keys:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,1d,00,3a,00,3a,00,1d,00,00,00,00,00

Answer 6

The inexhaustible sysinternals toolbox also provides a little program just for switching capslock with control -- ctrl2cap.exe.

Answer 7

I used to use AutoHotKey to do this.

I'd have a link in the startup directory to run a very basic ahk script:

Capslock::Ctrl

The thing is, Autohotkey isn't run as Administrator so it won't affect privileged windows, unless you use the task scheduler instead of the startup directory to run the script at login with higher privileges. The second problem is that sometimes, the script hangs when resuming sleep, so you may need to reload it, which is annoying.

AutoHotKey is better suited for more complex tasks, like writing macros.

Answer 8

You can use lswitch to remap language input to CapsLock.

Use any key to switch input languages, usage: lswitch [keycode]. Keycode is optional and defaults to context menu key. Another good candidate is a CapsLock key with a keycode of 20.

lswitch 20

Add it to autoload.

Answer 9

If, for some reason, you don't want to run third-party tools, it's possible to do this yourself with a bit of C. Thanks to Susam Pal's brilliant answer, I put the snippet below together.

It's practically a key-logger. It listens for key presses, captures them, and constructs keyboard input with the mapping in mind. The below console app need to be running for it to work.

You will need to compile this somehow. I used msys2.org with pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc and compiled with /mingw64/bin/gcc nocaps.c -o nocaps.exe.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <windows.h>

HHOOK hook;

#define KEYCODE_CAPSLOCK 20
#define KEYCODE_LCTRL 162

LRESULT CALLBACK keyboardHook(int nCode, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam)
{
    KBDLLHOOKSTRUCT *p = (KBDLLHOOKSTRUCT *) lParam;
    INPUT input = {.type = INPUT_KEYBOARD };

    printf("nCode=%d\t wParam=%d\t p->vkCode=%lu \t p->scanCode=%d\t\n", nCode, wParam, p->vkCode, p->scanCode);


    if (wParam == WM_KEYUP || wParam == WM_SYSKEYUP) {
        input.ki.dwFlags = KEYEVENTF_KEYUP;
    }

    if (p->vkCode == KEYCODE_CAPSLOCK && (p->flags & LLKHF_INJECTED) == 0) {
        input.ki.wVk = KEYCODE_LCTRL;
        SendInput(1, &input, sizeof (INPUT));
        return 1;
    } else if (p->vkCode == KEYCODE_LCTRL && (p->flags & LLKHF_INJECTED) == 0) {
        input.ki.wVk = KEYCODE_CAPSLOCK;
        SendInput(1, &input, sizeof (INPUT));
        return 1;
    }

    return CallNextHookEx(hook, nCode, wParam, lParam);
}

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    MSG messages;

    hook = SetWindowsHookEx(WH_KEYBOARD_LL, keyboardHook, NULL, 0);
    if (hook == NULL) {
        printf("Error %d\n", GetLastError());
        return 1;
    }

    printf("Mapping CAPSLOCK=>LCTRL and LCTRL=>CAPSLOCK..\n");
    while (GetMessage (&messages, NULL, 0, 0))
    {
        TranslateMessage(&messages);
        DispatchMessage(&messages);
    }
    return 0;
}