Mac OS X: Disable the Caps Lock Key

Contributor Icon Contributed by qmchenry Date Icon March 6, 2007  
Tag Icon Tagged: Apple Mac

I never use the caps lock key (at least the way it’s meant to be used). Instead, my left pinkie finger triggers it a few times a day. My right hand takes issue with this since it’s the one that has to delete the capitalized characters, some of which it had to type. This quick fix will disable the caps lock key and mend some fences between your hands.


Open System Preferences and select the Keyboard & Mouse pane. Within here, click the Keyboard tab and then the Modifier Keys… button at the bottom.

A small window will open on top of the system preferences. In this are four modifier keys (Caps Lock, Control, Option, and Command) and a pulldown for each. To disable the Caps Lock key, pull down the associated menu and select No Action. It is also possible to swap the functions of these modifier keys (if you have a funky keyboard or are just feeling mean).

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  • Ted Johnson
    tHANK yOU SO mUCH!!!
  • troyh
    They broke this is Snow Leopard for USB keyboards. That sysprefs pane does absolutely nothing in Snow Leopard.
  • Brad
    I agree. Although mine is strange cause I had caps-lock disabled in 10.5.8. After the upgrade, it's till disabled, but I can't turn it back on for the external keyboard (Aluminum). The caps-lock setting in that syspref pane works fine for the Macbook Pro 15" unibody keyboard.
  • Rob
    No love for disabling the caps lock in Snow Leopard with full USB keyboard, it does work with the newer compact USB keyboard, strange.
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