3 Ways To Customize the Modifier Keys On a Mac

You can change how the Command, Control, Shift, Option and FN keys work on your Mac. If you need, you can remap one to the other. You can also assign special functions to left or right versions of the keys if you only need one. The third-party app Karabiner allows you to remap any key on your keyboard to any other key and some special functions.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you three ways you can customize how the modifier keys on your Mac work.
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The modifier keys on your Mac keyboard are the Command, Control, Option, Shift, and also the fn key. There are several different ways that you can change how these keys work. The first two methods I'm going to show you just involve using System Preferences. Then I'm going to show you a third party tool where you can customize the modifier keys even more. 
So first if you want to remap the modifier keys, like change the Command key to Control and vice versa, you can do that in System Preferences and then go to Keyboard and go to the Keyboard section. Then click Modifier Keys. This will list the different modifier keys including the Caps Lock key. You can change what each one does. You can see each one is mapped to its standard function here. But if I wanted to change Control to actually mean Command I could do so. I can change each one of these. What's really useful here is you can change the Caps Lock key to be an alternative for something else instead of Caps Lock. So I can use it as an alternative for Command, for instance. Or I can just turn Caps Lock off so I don't accidentally turn it on. Now I don't actually recommend using any of these. I know a lot of people are tempted especially in switching from Windows to maybe switching the Control and the Command keys to the opposite so it works a little bit more like you're used to. But would urge you to instead to take a few days to adjust to how the Mac keyboard works so you're using things just how they are meant to be on the keyboard instead of using a substitution here and then for the rest of your life everything is kind of reversed on the Mac keyboard. But the functions are here if you want to use them.
There's another part of System Preferences that will reference the modifier keys and allow you to assign special functions to one of the two versions of each modifier key. For instance if you have a Command key on both sides of your keyboard but you only ever use the left Command key. You could assign the right Command key to do something else. Go to Mission Control. In Mission Control there are three shortcuts here at the bottom. One to activate Mission Control. Another to show you the Windows for the current application and a third to show the Desktop. These are usually assigned to Control Up, Control Down, and F11. But you could change these to something else. What's interesting here is in the list not only are there things like the F keys and such but there are modifier keys based on the side of the keyboard that they're on. So, if you want to use the Left Command as Command but the Right Command activate Mission Control you can. I know I personally use the left modifier keys most of the time. A key like the Control key on the right side of my keyboard isn't ever used. So using that as a way to trigger Mission Control is kind of handy. 
Now the third method involves using a third party app. This is one that's been around for a long time, started in 2006, and a lot of Mac users use this. It's a open sourced project so it's actually free although you can support the open sourced project if you like. It's called Karabiner. You can find it at karabiner-elements.pqrs.org. You can download it here. The installation process is a little bit involved because you've got to grant permissions in a variety of different ways. So follow everything very carefully and read everything very carefully as you install it to make sure it's installed properly so it works. Once you have it installed you can run it like any other app. Then you've got a whole bunch of different things you can do. I'm only going to focus on the modifier keys here but you can explore lots of other ways to remap things on your keyboard. 
So under Simple Modifications we can go and Add an Item and then choose a key on the keyboard. You can choose a modifier key, left and right are treated separately or really any key on your keyboard if you want. So if there's some other key that you're not using you could also go ahead and remap that as something else. I'll choose the right Control key. I can map that to another key or function. So you could see here I could map that to simply another key or I could choose all sorts of different characters that that key could type or things it could trigger. Under Media Controls there are a bunch of different things like, for instance, I could set it to launch Launchpad. So now the right Control key will launch Launchpad. There are a lot of different things that you could now set these modifier keys to do or you can have them work in different ways. Using Karabiner Elements seems a little intimidating at first but actually adding these little remappings here are pretty simple and easy. Just remember that you've added them in case something isn't working the way you would expect later on. You know to go back into here and Remove or Change the modification you've made that maybe causing the problem. 
So there are three different ways to change how the modifier keys on your Mac work. I hope you found this useful.

Comments: 6 Responses to “3 Ways To Customize the Modifier Keys On a Mac”

stephen bamforth

3 years ago

Hi, what is the easiest way to allocate an email address to a key? Thanks

Gary Rosenzweig

Stephen: Use a Text Replacement. See https://macmost.com/10-ways-to-use-text-replacements-on-your-mac.html

Thomas Cotton

I activated Karabiner-EventViewer and its companion. It is locked in launch pad and I cannot unlock it with command info. How do I get rid of this application since I have decided not to use it.

Thomas: https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/docs/manual/operation/uninstall/

Alex Rosental MsChE

Hi Gary, after years of frustrated attempts I cannot figure out how to customize a short access to a drop down menu action that is not in the system preferences keyboard modifiers list. e.g. hIlite and edit text say in pages to "lo-hi caps and capitalize". There are many others I would be interested if possible

Alex: Not sure what you are trying to do? What is "lo-hi caps?" If you just want to make a custom keyboard shortcut, I have a tutorial on that here: https://macmost.com/create-your-own-custom-mac-keyboard-shortcuts.html

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3 Ways To Customize the Modifier Keys On a Mac

Comments: 6 Responses to “3 Ways To Customize the Modifier Keys On a Mac”

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