Using caps lock as a hyper key
Published on February 16th, 2026
About a year ago, Raycast added a feature which allows you to set any key to act as the "Hyper" key (Cmd + Opt + Ctrl + Shift). This key combination is rarely taken in apps because it's a pain to hit all those keys at once. However, mapping all of the keys to a single "Hyper" key opens up a whole new world of keyboard shortcuts!
The question becomes, what key to use? The community landed on Caps Lock, because it's not used all that much, and I followed suit and mapped my Caps Lock to Hyper using Raycast. I do, albeit very rarely, use Caps Lock though, and having it mapped to Hyper broke my muscle memory.
As it turns out, QMK (the software underlying VIA, used in many mechanical keyboards) has a Mod-Tap key that does exactly what I wanted: do one thing if it's only tapped (toggle Caps Lock), and do something else when it's held down (Hyper key, or ✦). To enable this:
- Open VIA and make sure your keyboard is recognized.
- Click the Caps Lock key to edit it.
- In the "Special" tab at the bottom of the screen, select "Any".
- Input the following string:
MT(MOD_HYPR, KC_CAPS). - Hit "Confirm".
When updating the string via the same method, you'll see that it has been expanded to its full QMK designation: MT(MOD_LCTL | MOD_LSFT | MOD_LALT | MOD_LGUI, KC_CAPS), which should give you some intel into how you can update this to be whatever you want.
This fixed my conundrum! Tap Caps Lock to toggle SHOUT MODE, hold Caps Lock in combination with another key to use ✦ Hyper. A big benefit of this over Raycast is that it's portable. The profile is stored on the keyboard, so no matter what computer I connect it to, it'll still work.