How do I map "caplock to escape but shift+caplock = normal caplock", like Gnome has?
I use i3wm, and to map cap lock to escape, I run:
setxkbmap -option caps:swapescape
This works fine, but sometimes while hitting the F1 key, my pinky can accidentally hit the Escape key, which turns on CapsLock.
Gnome has a very nice way to do this, where Shift + Escape = CapsLock. Hitting Escape on its own will do nothing.
Not what you asked for, but you may be interested in getting a keyboard running QMK where you can define these kind of modifier overloading (and much much more) on the keyboard itself, so it's "portable" and doesn't require OS/DE settings
If everything else fails, there’s always an option of defining your own keymap and enabling it in initrc.
I don't use that so I'm mostly shooting in the dark, but.. does caps:escape_shifted_capslock do what you want?
(source: localectl list-x11-keymap-options | grep esc)
Commenting because fellow caps-esc swap enthusiast, and I would like to know the answer as well
Wait why do people want escape there???
I like the backspace there like Colemak has. I can do Fn-Backspace(capslock) to activate Caps Lock but that's something I added to my Keyboard separately.
just curious: why do you like doing it?
I switched because of neovim, and got used to it. I was never the kind of guy to press caps to type capitals, always just kept shift pressed down with my pinky, so i basically never used the caps key anyway
I use keyd for software remapping now, and I like it a lot more than xkb's esoteric options. It has functionality for layers like layer:C, where any "passthrough" input will have the defined modifier (or combo like C-S-M), but you can define whatever other bindings inside.
Long story short, I've used it to remap caps, control, shift (with a custom shift layer for some symbols), and meta, with overloads, double tap/hold into layers, oneshots, timeouts, and all sorts of (surprisingly fluid) nonsense. It's so much easier than wading through xkb options for me.
To sidestep the question slightly less, I always got rid of capslock altogether instead of swapping. That still leaves true escape to be hit accidentally, but I think there should be an option to change escape too?
Edit: what I always used was
# make CapsLock behave like Ctrl: setxkbmap -option ctrl:nocaps # make short-pressed Ctrl behave like Escape: xcape -e 'Control_L=Escape'
from here
This is not an answer to your question, but your left pinkie will thank you if you map CTRL to CAPS.
Maybe this can help https://github.com/sezanzeb/input-remapper
It's option caps:escape_shifted_capslock I think.
You can look through /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst for all the options.
Edit: Just looked up when this was added, this is a new option from 2024: