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Disable Caps Lock on Mac OS X

By marcus • Jul 28th, 2005 • Category: geek •

By far the most frustrating key on the keyboard has to be CAPS LOCK. Does any one ever use this key!? After many years of accidentally pressing it, I finally stumbled upon the way to disable it.

Go to the Keyboard & Mouse Preferences
Select Modifier Keys
And change Caps Lock Key to No Action

screen capture
Screen Capture

NOTE: On my Powerbook the Caps Lock Light still turns on and off when I press the button. On my Powermac and Macally keyboard the light stays off.

This works in Mac OS X 10.4, also known as Tiger, I don’t think it works on earlier versions. You may want to try: uControl [gnufoo.org]

Next Week: What the hell is Scroll Lock and Pause good for

24 Responses »

  1. tim baker on June 26th, 2007 at 11:05 pm:

    Aaah! Bliss!! Caps Lock has been the bane of my life for years! Nothing worse than typing (usually a great idea) and then having to redo it all in lower case! Thank you thank you thank you

  2. fanatique bloggt! » Blog Archive » Ja. So. Genau so will ich das! on August 31st, 2007 at 5:05 am:

    [...] Hier ist sie: die ultimative Drei-Schritt-Anleitung, um Caps-F’*!##-Lock endgültig den Gar auszumachen (leider nur für den Mac).http://mkaz.com/archives/86Hatte Niepi mir schon vor Ewigkeiten in die Bookmarks gelegt. Habs aber heute erst getan.Technorati Tags: CapsLock, MacOS, Work [...]

  3. ernest leitch on October 31st, 2007 at 7:09 pm:

    That was way to easy. Thank you sooo much. I always hit that stupid key by mistake.

  4. Randy on January 11th, 2008 at 10:45 am:

    A great tip — I recently switched to Mac laptop for work and the caps lock key is one of the worst designed features of the keyboard, which otherwise I really like.

  5. don shafer on February 14th, 2008 at 7:50 pm:

    Bless you!!!!

  6. common dream » I found great post on how to disable the Caps Lock key on your Mac. on March 27th, 2008 at 5:10 pm:

    [...] Acid3 I found great post on how to disable the Caps Lock key on your Mac. March 27th, 2008 / 0 Comments /Trackback [...]

  7. laurie on March 31st, 2008 at 11:52 am:

    Bless you, Marcus!!

  8. Order of the Bath » Blog Archive » No need to SHOUT on July 8th, 2008 at 8:59 am:

    [...] people prefer to disable it completely and, I must admit, it is a pretty useless [...]

  9. Jeb on September 14th, 2008 at 8:46 am:

    THANKS SO MUCH.

  10. MacBook Pro user on November 3rd, 2008 at 6:05 am:

    Thanks so much.

    I’ve been looking for this for quite some time and you made my day.

    I hope the Caps Lock key will soon be removed from our keyboards. There would be better use for the space it occupies.

  11. Grey-Bearded Geek » Blog Archive » Disable Your Caps Lock Key on November 14th, 2008 at 7:03 am:

    [...] For non-X11 Mac apps, try this. [...]

  12. Jan on December 5th, 2008 at 11:52 pm:

    Oh I thank you so much for this!

  13. John on January 15th, 2009 at 1:44 pm:

    Eternal gratitude!

  14. Terry on February 13th, 2009 at 8:58 pm:

    I agree with the frustration about the CAP lock key. Disabling it is better than leaving it on, but I would prefer the option of having it deactivated by pressing the shift key as it was in typewriters and is still an option on Windows computers. It is sometimes useful, but I don’t like having to look somewhere to know if it is activated or deactivated.

  15. griskin on March 17th, 2009 at 9:28 am:

    Thanks for the tip! A little guiding light helping to navigate a world of clumsy engineering!

  16. Harold Pascal on April 20th, 2009 at 8:17 am:

    Re: Disable caps lock
    Brilliant!!!
    Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

  17. sarah on May 7th, 2009 at 10:45 am:

    i heart you….. and whoever it was that sent me here to find you.

  18. Paul on May 13th, 2009 at 2:39 am:

    Beautiful! Exactly what I was looking for! Thank you for that!!!

  19. gleancreativereuse on June 24th, 2009 at 11:07 am:

    ditto to all of the blessings… love my keyboard, hate the caps lock. thank you!!

  20. Christopher Garlington on July 9th, 2009 at 4:54 pm:

    Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I swear to God, I swear on all things holy, I swear on the snub nose .38 dangling precariously from my fingertips, I swear I REALLY REALLY NEEDED THAT FNORKIN TIP!

  21. kaz.anne on September 17th, 2009 at 8:48 am:

    yo, cuz — i queried a tech friend of mine Up North about this prob and he sent me to you. funny world. and THANKS.

  22. Kent on October 15th, 2009 at 8:07 am:

    Ahhh, relief! I had it turned off on my old Powerbook Titanium, but couldn’t remember how to turn it off on the new MacBookPro!

    FYI – on the MBP, the light does not come on, not that I care as long as the damn thing doesn’t have me yelling at people!

  23. Trolle on October 18th, 2009 at 2:42 pm:

    Thank you! I’ve always wondered why Caps Lock doesn’t have to be enabled by turning three keys (the President has one, Chief of Staff the other, and the third is destroyed) simultaneously, the entering a 3235-digit code, then…. givl, I hate that key ;-)

  24. Darren on January 19th, 2010 at 10:48 am:

    There’s a free Mac utility called CapSee that notifies you when you bump your caps lock key to help prevent accidental caps locks. You can download it free at threemagination.com/capsee or on Apple’s downloads page. I never wanted to completely disable the key, but I hate how I always accidentally enable it all the time!

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