Caps Word

The most annoying key on the keyboard is the Caps Lock. Does anyone actually use this key? It seems to get activated at the most inopportune moments (eg: when typing a password) without our knowledge.

But there are times when you want to type a small word in caps. Especially for programmers, since code often contains constants that are in ALL_CAPS. This is where the CAPS WORD mode is really handy.

Most of us have used this mode on a mobile phone keyboard. You can lock the phone keyboard to enter multiple capitals consecutively, but when you press space it automatically comes out of the capitals state.

Why can't we do this on a desktop keyboard? You can - if your keyboard supports the QMK Firmware.

The process to do so is as follows:

  1. Enable the setting in the firmware. If you are using Vial, then do this on the vial fork instead. Go to keyboards/<your kb>/keymaps/<your keymap>/rules.mk and add the setting CAPS_WORD_ENABLE = yes
  2. Bind a key to the keycode 0x7c73. This is the keycode for caps word. If you are using Vial, you can skip this step
  3. Build the firmware and flash your keyboard. If you are using Vial, you can bind the key now using the Vial UI

For my keyboard, I have set a combo of Left Shift + Right Shift to the caps word keycode. This means if I press both shifts simultaneously, then I get caps, until I press space and it automatically reverts to normal mode.