Power at your fingertips

When switching between MacOS and Windows, the keyboard position for shortcuts such as copy and paste are switched from Ctrl to Cmd
- Since these are in different places on the keyboard, user needs to press a different key on the keyboard, which interferes with muscle memory
Simply swapping Ctrl and Cmd via the Keyboard preferences isn’t a straightforward solution, because then using muscle memory for Ctrl codes in terminal and VIM are now displaced
Another alternative instead of swapping Ctrl and Cmd would be to rebind every single possible command, such as Cmd + C, V, H, Q, T (and so forth) to use Ctrl instead (via Keyboard preferences)
- This solution is overly cumbersome and every single possible combination would have to be considered one-by-one
This conundrum also applies to using the Caps lock as a modifier key when pressed with other keys, and escape when pressed by itself
- On windows, I use Caps to rebind to the Ctrl modifier when pressed with another key
- This allows for Caps + C / V to copy and paste respectively
- However, if in MacOS Caps is rebinded to Cmd (via Karabiner elements), then it will work for copy and paste, but then none of the Ctrl modifiers for Vim such as Ctrl + U (undo) or Ctrl + C (break) will work in terminal.
The best solution I’ve found so far, is NOT swapping Ctrl and Cmd****, but altering the behavior of the Caps modifier so that it sends Ctrl keycodes in Terminal based apps such as iTerm and VS Code, otherwise by default send Cmd****.
- This is done by setting the logic based on the active foreground app: if the foreground app is a terminal based app, then activate the Caps → Ctrl modifier rule, otherwise activate the Caps → Cmd rule by default.

My Karabiner JSON config

To add or remove apps, modify bundle_identifiers
Can find bundle_identifier by: osascript -e 'id of app "Name of App"'
Can use Karabiner Complex Modification tool, or edit JSON file directly (examples below used the modification tool)

{
  "title": "Change caps_lock to command",
  "rules": [
    {
      "description": "Change caps_lock to Command if pressed with other keys, to escape if pressed alone.",
      "manipulators": [
        {
          "type": "basic",
          "from": {
            "key_code": "caps_lock",
            "modifiers": {
              "optional": [
                "any"
              ]
            }
          },
          "to": [
            {
              "key_code": "left_command"
            }
          ],
          "to_if_alone": [
            {
              "key_code": "escape"
            }
          ],
          "conditions": [
            {
              "type": "frontmost_application_if",
              "bundle_identifiers": [
                "^com\\.microsoft\\.VSCode",
                "^com\\.googlecode\\.iterm2"
              ]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

{
  "title": "Change caps_lock to CTRL",
  "rules": [
    {
      "description": "Change caps_lock to CTRL if pressed with other keys, to escape if pressed alone. (APP SPECIFIC)",
      "manipulators": [
        {
          "type": "basic",
          "from": {
            "key_code": "caps_lock",
            "modifiers": {
              "optional": [
                "any"
              ]
            }
          },
          "to": [
            {
              "key_code": "left_control"
            }
          ],
          "to_if_alone": [
            {
              "key_code": "escape"
            }
          ],
          "conditions": [
            {
              "type": "frontmost_application_if",
              "bundle_identifiers": [
                "com\\.microsoft\\.VSCode",
                "com\\.googlecode\\.iterm2"
              ]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}