vim

Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away — the Escape key

In Apple's 10.12.1 macOS update, the file 'ApplePaySplashSA.tiff' seems to spilled the beans on Apple's new MacBook Pro's (and possibly other laptops') contextual function row key replacement. I'm guessing this change won't make it's way to Apple's Magic Keyboard for some time... but for users of Apple's laptops, having a 'software-defined' escape key might be a pill that's hard to swallow.

Macbook Pro Escape Key missing OLED contextual keys

Remapping the Caps Lock key to Escape in macOS Sierra

Update: As of macOS Sierra 10.12.1, the Caps Lock -> Escape remapping can be done natively in the Keyboard System Preferences pane! To remap without any 3rd party software, do the following:

  1. Open System Preferences and click on 'Keyboard'
  2. Click on 'Modifier Keys...'
  3. For 'Caps Lock (⇪) Key', choose '⎋ Escape'
  4. Click 'OK'

(See screenshot for reference).

For the past three years, I've used the Mac Development Ansible Playbook to automatically configure all my Macs, so they have the same applications, utilities, and preferences at all times. One of the most important tweaks I use is the combination of Karabiner and Seil to remap a few keys and to increase the key repeat rate.