Why I Wanted Another Keyboard Shortcut

Shortcuts. They are so useful. They allow us to get things done faster, and that’s important to some of us. There are global shortcuts that work from anywhere you are on your Mac. And there are app-specific shortcut which only work in a particular app. And herein lies the main issue most of have with shortcuts: there are literally hundreds of shortcuts. And it is almost impossible to remember which shortcut works where! I found a very useful solution to this, where I can make my own easy to remember shortcuts that don’t conflict with other shortcuts that already exist. Let me explain.

What is a Modifier Key?

Most global shortcuts and app-specific shortcuts start by pressing a modifier key on your keyboard and then, while holding down the modifier key, you press another key. One of the most common examples of a modifier key on the Mac is the Command key symbolized on the keyboard as ⌘. ⌘ + C is the shortcut to Copy a selection. ⌘ + V is the Paste clipboard contents shortcut. And ⌘ + Z is the Undo shortcut. Most of us use those quite a bit. Other modifier keys on the Mac are Option ⌥, Control ⌃, and Shift ⇧ keys.

Those are the main modifier keys: Command, Option, Control, and Shift. And then there are combinations of the modifier keys, such as ⌘ + ⇧ + N. Using that combination in the Finder window creates a new folder. I use that a lot during file management. Another modifier key combination I use a lot is ⌘ + Delete. In some applications the Delete key doesn’t delete an item. That’s where the shortcut ⌘ + Delete often works.

What is a Hyperkey?

Now you know what a modifier key is. That seems like it gives us plenty of combinations. But with that plenty comes abundance; hundreds upon hundreds of combinations in dozens of different applications. Who can remember all that? I for one cannot. That’s why I went looking for a new modifier key; one that would allow me to make my own shortcuts that I could remember. The new modifier key is actually a combination of modifier keys called the Hyperkey.

The Caps Lock key is basically an unused key. Sure you use it some but most of us don’t use it a lot. So why not turn it into a new modifier key?

How I Made Caps Lock my Hyperkey

I have heard about turning the Caps Lock key into a Hyperkey for many years on Tech podcasts, yet I’ve never taken the time to do it. One of the ways to convert your Caps Lock key into a new modifier is to use a free utility called Karabiner-Elements. While Karabiner-Elements can do many things, it can easily convert your Caps Lock key into a modifier key.

I use this free Mac utility, Karabiner-Elements, to change what certain keys do. In my case, I told it to intercept the Caps Lock key and make it behave differently. This is called re-mapping the key.

Instead of turning on CAPS LOCK, pressing and holding that key now tells my Mac that I am holding down several modifier keys at once: Control, Option, Shift, and Command (⌃ + ⌥ + ⇧ + ⌘). In other words, Karabiner-Elements turns one conveniently located key into my Hyperkey.

So when I hold down my Caps Lock key and press another key, my Mac sees it as a special keyboard shortcut. That gives me a whole new set of shortcuts without interfering with the ones I already use.

Karabiner-Elements isn’t the only way

Karabiner-Elements made this pretty simple, but it is not the only app that can do this. For instance there’s BetterTouchTool (included in your Setapp subscription), dedicated Hyperkey utilities, and the Alfred application (preferred by many).

How I use my Hyperkey

6 Shortcuts I Currently Use

Let’s start with three simple ones that almost everyone can will find useful. When you see the symbol ✦ K, that is the Caps Lock key. And although I show the letters capitalized you don’t need to capitalize them. So ✦ K + L is actually ✦ K + l.

✦ K + L — Lowercase selected text. Make a selection of any text and turn the words into lower case words.

✦ K + U — Uppercase selected text. Turn a selection into UPPER CASE.

✦ K + C — Capitalize selected text. This one is useful if you want to turn your text into a nice looking title. Select the text and press ✦ K + C.

Other Hyperkey Shortcuts I Use Often

✦ K + E — Eject all external drives. At night my MacBook Pro is hooked up to all my external drives. In the morning I need to eject all the external drives before unhooking the cables connected to those drives so I can move my laptop to another room. So I made a Keyboard Maestro macro to eject all the drives at once,

✦ K + B — Hide/show desktop files, folders, and widgets. When I write i don’t want to see all the Desktop files and folders, nor do I want to see the various widgets on the left of my screen. So I made another Keyboard Maestro macro to hide them all and assigned ✦ K + B as my Hot Key to trigger the macro.

✦ K + D — Opens my Day One daily-entry template. This is my most complex macro, again made by Keyboard Maestro. It is one I use every morning. It opens a template for my daily journal entry. I use a combination of Keyboard Maestro and TextExpander to do this. I’ll go over this in more detail in a future post.

I’ll Probably Add More

There’s no doubt that I’ll add more over time. In fact I just added the ✦ K + B Keyboard Maestro macro, to clear my desktop so that I can write without any distractions.

I hope you find something useful in this article. If you have any questions or want further details about something in this article, please add your comments and questions below in the comment box.

Thank you for reading this and I’ll see you in the next post.

Ciao for now, this is Randino signing off.