Best Way to Remap Caps Lock to Esc with Wayland

Help
9

I was able to get Kanata to work! Here’s how I did it.

First, I added the following to my configuration.nix file:

environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
  ...
  kanata
  ...
];
  services.kanata = {
    enable = true;
    keyboards = {
      "logi".config = ''
(defsrc
  grv  1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    0    -    =    bspc
  tab  q    w    e    r    t    y    u    i    o    p    [    ]    \
  caps a    s    d    f    g    h    j    k    l    ;    '    ret
  lsft z    x    c    v    b    n    m    ,    .    /    rsft
  lctl lmet lalt           spc            ralt rmet rctl
)

(deflayer colemak
  grv  1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9    0    -    =    bspc
  tab  q    w    f    p    g    j    l    u    y    ;    [    ]    \
  esc  a    r    s    t    d    h    n    e    i    o    '    ret
  lsft z    x    c    v    b    k    m    ,    .    /    rsft
  lctl lmet lalt           spc            ralt rmet rctl
)
  '';
    };
  };

Logi is just an arbitrary name that I’m using since I have a Logitech keyboard.

I then ran sudo nixos-rebuild switch and now I’m able to remap my caps lock key as esc!

Here’s a few notes:

  • The colemak deflayer isn’t a true colemak keyboard. The only difference is that I replaced the caps key with esc.
  • Of course this didn’t work the first time :slight_smile: . I had a typo and nothing seemed to change on my keyboard after running nixos-rebuild. The good news is that the log file (that I could see with sudo journalctl -fu kanata-logi.service) did a good job telling me where the typo was.
  • I had to use the gnome keyboard switcher to switch to a US QWERTY layout first to make this work.

Thanks again for the suggestions and the help!

3 Likes