The STOP SHOUTING, NUMBNUT caret (or: features to look forward to in macOS 14)

It’s one of those little things that, once you’ve seen them in action, you can’t help but wonder: How on earth did we live without it? Of course I’m talking about:


Source: Video: macOS Sonoma top features and changes

Nothing against the little green light in the caps lock key, but that’s the last place I’m looking at while typing. This new indicator is a super elegant solution in my book, because I notice it without even typing, right where the problem is about to happen.

And it hopefully annoys confirmed shouters.

Are there any features you are looking forward to?

Yes.
Under Windows, I’d like the freakin mouse pointer to disappear temporarily when I am typing. :wink:

It doesn’t? :thinking: I can’t even remember…

I haven’t tried it, but supposedly you can do that with an AHK script. You can find the script on GitHub.

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Interesting. Will try that for sure. Thanks.

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I forget Caps Lock even exists, I’ve been binding that to Ctrl/Esc hybrid for so many years now. I used this tool pretty much for one thing: to make it so when you tap Caps Lock it acts as an Esc keypress, and when you hold it down and combine it with other keys it acts like Command. It’s always annoyed me that one of the most ergonomic positions on the keyboard for a modifier key is occupied by something as generally useless as Caps Lock.

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No joke!
. . . . . . . . . .

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Oh my. I hope that’s switch-off-able. I use the already existing visual indicator of caps lock being on that MY LETTERS COME OUT IN CAPS.

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True, for some reason putting control there never really catched on (aside from maybe HHKB these days), despite being more useful.

Which potentially really sucks in password fields.

But I agree, there should be an option to turn it off.

There used to be a native setting for that, and maybe there still is somewhere in the iOS Settings panel that got ported over to macOS. Maybe try searching for “Modifiers”? You could swap all of them around as I recall, or disable keys you don’t want.

I only used Karabiner because I like that multi-use behaviour (and as a Vim user, Esc gets used… a lot).

But it’s a new feature in an upcoming version. I was referring to the first post (the indicator “icon” next to the caret).

2023-06-17 20_45_50

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It works. :slight_smile:

image

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That’s great! Did you end up downloading the executable or the source code?

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Both.
First the executable because I followed the link I thought was for the script but led to AHK home page.
And then I found the code, that I actually copied, and created a new script at my end, and pasted the code in it.

Both ways worked.

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I just did the same thing, works well. I didn’t even know I this was something I needed, but apparently I did!

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Esc/cmd hybrid. Very interesting. I have messed with making Keymappings natively — I once

  1. contrived to put the curly quotes in a more sensible place that way, and

  2. coopted the ten-key zone so I could turn a bluetooth ten-key into a music typesetting kbd for MuseScore

— but that is child’s play compared to this. I don’t know how a mapping would accomplish such an esc/cmd hybridization.

Oh great, now I’m going to be sitting down and spending a lot of time relearning about keymappings. Because the mind wants what it wants.

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I’m looking forward to a helpful and cheery paperclip popping-up when I start writing a letter that will ask me if I need help to write. I can see that as a real boon to the advancement of the species…

Only us oldies will understand :slight_smile:

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That paperclip, wherever it is, must be pretty solidly morose and bitter by now. Maybe more biting binder clip than a cheery chipper. Be careful what you wish for.

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I bind caps_lock to delete_forward. It’s the only thing I use Karabiner for!

I’ve never used caps lock and always found it annoying.