Install and Hyper basics

Install Karabiner-Elements, import the Capslock rules in one click, check that they work, and learn tap, hold, Hyper and the sixteen control planes.

Capslock Enhancement V3 current targets macOS and Karabiner-Elements. There is nothing else to install: the configuration is a set of complex-modification rules that Karabiner interprets, so nothing new runs in the background and nothing is compiled on your machine.

Note

This guide was verified with Karabiner-Elements 16.1.0 in August 2026, whose support matrix covers macOS 13 Ventura through macOS 27 on Intel and Apple silicon. Check the official site for the current release.

Install

Install Karabiner-Elements

Download the DMG from the official site and run Karabiner-Elements.pkg, or install the cask:

brew install --cask karabiner-elements

Open Karabiner-Elements Settings and follow its prompts in System Settings. Allow the privileged and non-privileged background services, Accessibility, Input Monitoring, and the Driver Extension. Under Virtual Keyboard, select the layout matching your physical keyboard. The official installation guide explains what each permission is for.

Import the rules

Open the import link below. Any browser hands it straight to Karabiner-Elements:

Import Capslock Enhancement V3.1

Or paste the URL yourself:

karabiner://karabiner/assets/complex_modifications/import?url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Vonng/Capslock/main/mac_v3/capslock.json

Choose Import and allow the browser to open Karabiner-Elements.

Enable the rules and check them

Under Settings › Complex Modifications, enable the rules you want. The ten rules are independent, so a family you have no use for can simply stay off; the first one, CapsLock to Hyper, is the one every other rule depends on.

Then tap ⇪: it should send ⎋. Hold it while pressing H J K L: the cursor moves. You are on plane zero.

Tip

Two alternatives lead to the same place. The Karabiner gallery page has an Import button of its own, and for a fully offline install you can drop capslock.json into ~/.config/karabiner/assets/complex_modifications/ and pick Add predefined rule. Karabiner-EventViewer shows what any key actually emits if something looks wrong.

Ten rules

The Capslock control plane zero — Control plane 0: the layout you get by holding ⇪ on its own. Fifteen more planes sit behind the left-side modifiers.

The keyboard map is colour-coded by purpose, so a key's neighbourhood tells you roughly what it does before you look anything up. The configuration ships as ten Karabiner rules, one per family, and you enable them one by one.

The ten rules in capslock.json, and how many mappings each one carries
Family	Colour	What it does	Mappings
Basic	Blue	Tap `⇪` for `⎋`, hold it for `✱` Hyper, plus input-source switching	4
Navigation	Pink	Vim-style movement, selection, tab and window switching, pointer and wheel	102
Deletion	Brown	`NM,.` delete by character, word or line without moving your hand	12
MouseKey	Keypad	The numeric keypad as a complete mouse	63
Window	Azure	Close and cycle tabs, windows, apps and desktops; sleep, lock, log out	19
Application	Yellow	Launch or focus six applications across three planes	18
Terminal	Green	Terminal signals, IDE run controls, Vim and Tmux prefixes, Codex and Claude	10
Clipboard	Purple	Five extra text clipboards on `6`–`0`	10
Shifter	Orange	Brackets, braces and code punctuation within reach of the home row	16
Functional	Cyan	Screenshots, media, brightness, keyboard light and volume	28

Tip

The configurator reads the same V3 JSON. It is the fastest way to inspect one key on any plane, or to change an application shortcut and export a configuration you can import straight away.

Tap, hold, and Hyper

Caps Lock now has two behaviours that never collide, because one is decided on release and the other while the key is down.

Everything Caps Lock used to do is still one chord away
Gesture	Output	Purpose
Tap `⇪`	`⎋` Escape	Escape without leaving the home row
Hold `⇪`	`✱` Hyper	Enter the base control plane
`✱` with `⎋`	`⇪` Caps Lock	Toggle the original Caps Lock state
`✱` with `␣`	`⌃` with `␣`	Switch input source
`✱` with `⌘` with `␣`	`⌃` with `⌘` with `␣`	Emoji and symbols picker

✱ is not a private signal. Karabiner rewrites the held Caps Lock into all four right-side modifiers at once, ⌘ with ⌥ with ⌃ with ⇧, which has two consequences worth understanding:

Other software still sees an ordinary chord. Alfred, Moom, Magnet, Raycast and your IDE receive ⌃ with ⌥ with ⇧ with ⌘ plus a key and can bind it like any other shortcut.
Anything the rules do not claim passes straight through. ✱ with A has no rule of its own precisely so that a window manager can own it. The same trick works for any key you want to hand to another app.

Sixteen control planes

While Hyper stays held, the four left-side modifiers act as four binary switches. Read them as four bits and you get planes 0–15:

⌘ = 1 · ⌥ = 2 · ⌃ = 4 · ⇧ = 8.

Every plane in V3.1, how many mappings it carries, and the theme it follows
Plane	Left modifiers	Mappings	What lives there
0	`✱`	89	The daily layer: movement, deletion, apps, terminal, symbols
1	`✱` with `⌘`	59	Selection, second-choice apps, clipboard copy
2	`✱` with `⌥`	38	Pointer movement and third-choice apps
3	`✱` with `⌘` with `⌥`	8	Word and paragraph selection
4	`✱` with `⌃`	12	Desktop and window management
5	`✱` with `⌘` with `⌃`	—	Free
6	`✱` with `⌥` with `⌃`	—	Free
7	`✱` with `⌘` with `⌥` with `⌃`	—	Free
8	`✱` with `⇧`	25	App, window and tab switching
9	`✱` with `⌘` with `⇧`	21	Accelerated wheel
10	`✱` with `⌥` with `⇧`	21	Accelerated pointer
11	`✱` with `⌘` with `⌥` with `⇧`	—	Free
12	`✱` with `⌃` with `⇧`	9	Wheel
13	`✱` with `⌘` with `⌃` with `⇧`	—	Free
14	`✱` with `⌥` with `⌃` with `⇧`	—	Free
15	`✱` with `⌘` with `⌥` with `⌃` with `⇧`	—	Free

Nine planes are populated; seven are free space for rules of your own. Open the configurator to browse the same sixteen rows interactively and see what each key does on the plane you select.

The planes are not arbitrary. Across the whole configuration the same modifier keeps the same meaning, which is why the layout can be learned once rather than memorized key by key:

Modifier	Consistent meaning
`⌘`	Extend the action: select instead of move, copy instead of paste, the second application
`⌥`	Leave the text world: pointer, wheel, the third application
`⌃`	Talk to the window server: desktops, Mission Control, screen state
`⇧`	Switch containers: apps, windows, tabs; or accelerate a pointer action

Compatibility

The layout is drawn for ANSI keyboards and works the same on built-in Apple keyboards and external ones. ISO layouts work too, but the two keys that differ physically may land somewhere unexpected.
The MouseKey family needs a numeric keypad. Everything else works on a tenkeyless board.
Older macOS releases need an archived Karabiner-Elements build, which this guide does not cover.

Warning

macOS reserves a few system-wide chords of its own. The most common clash is ⌘ with ⌥ with ⌃ with ⇧ with ., which can open a diagnostics dialog; see issue #30. Remap the system shortcut if it conflicts with a plane you use.

Continue with navigation, deletion, and mouse control.