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.