Windows 10: Changing Caps Lock to Behave Like Shift Lock

Is there any way to change the behavior of caps lock on Windows 11 to behave like a shift lock key? To be more specific, I would like to be able to not only type capital letters LIKE THIS but also special characters !@{} by using the caps lock key. I am NOT asking about disabling caps lock using the shift key. Ideally I would never have to touch the shift key when typing.

:)

 

Press Shift Key to turn off Caps Lock

Actually, I get asked this quite a lot

There is, however, a very good reason to prefer this (old) „Typewriter Caps lock“-behavior over the new default, and it's simply this: if „Press the SHIFT key“ (instead of „Press the CAPS LOCK key“) is selected, then the behavior of „Caps lock“ changes from being a „toggle key“ to being a key that can only be used to turn „Caps lock“ on – to turn „Caps lock“ off, one has to press (either) one of the Shift keys.

This can be advantageous for touch typists, who are used to writing long passages of text without looking at the keyboard, and especially so if they're (C/C++) programmers, who may still regularly find themselves typing in variable names of CONSTANTS_IN_UPPERCASE.

That's because, if Caps lock is not a toggle key, it's not necessary to keep track of its current „toggle state“ in your head:

• If I want „Caps lock“ to be on, I can press CAPS as often as I like. If it happened to be enabled already, nothing changes; otherwise, I can be sure it's enabled afterwards.
  
  
• If I want „Caps lock“ to be off, I can simply press SHIFT

This sounds like a hypothetical advantage, but it's not. I work as a programmer, and I often find myself typing in code like the following:

/* Some debugging code; will only be included in debug builds: */
#if defined _DEBUG

Afterwards, I may pause a little, to think about the code line I would like to type in next. Now, if „Caps lock“ is a toggle key, I may (once I decide to continue) be unsure if I actually remembered to turn „Caps lock“ off at the end of ‘_DEBUG’.

Did I? Did I not? – The only way to be sure, is to look.

This is not so, if the „Press the SHIFT key“ behavior is enabled. If unsure, I can just press SHIFT once, be sure of the set state, and merrily continue may way.

That, for me, is the single most important reason to prefer the „Press the SHIFT key“ setting. Also, interestingly, this used to be the default behavior in the old days … at least, until Microsoft decided to ditch Windows 9x in favor of Windows NT¹.

¹ Actually, my memory could be wrong in this regard and I'm not completely sure … maybe someone more knowledgeable in those matters can confirm that the „Caps lock“ default behavior was indeed changed during the switch from Windows 9x to Windows XP?

 

Disable Caps Lock on Windows 10?

The below does not disable CAPS LOCK; instead it converts CAPS LOCK into SHIFT LOCK.

• Right-click Start
• Choose Control Panel.
  
• Under Clock, Language and Region, choose
  Change input methods.
• On the left, choose
  Advanced Settings.
• Near the bottom, click on
  Change language bar hot keys (this is a blue link)
• On the Advanced Key Settings tab, select Press the Shift key
  radio button.
• Click OK, then Save

After this change:

• You press the CAPS LOCK key puts the keyboard in all-caps mode
• You press the SHIFT key to turn off CAPS LOCK and exit all-caps mode.
  • Note that pressing CAPS LOCK again
    will not turn off CAPS LOCK; only by pressing either SHIFT key will CAPS LOCK turn off.

This is similar behavior to how the SHIFT LOCK key works on typewriters.

 

pressing shift turns on caps lock

typing in all lowercase because this is incredibly frustrating. whenever i press shift, the caps lock is turned on. i have windows 10, and this started happening after installing the most recent update this morning - today is 12/6/2015. yes, sticky
keys and filter keys are disabled. when shift is pressed, the light actually comes on for the caps lock button, so i think somehow the shift function was replaced by the caps lock function. i have tried using the regedit fix to disable the caps lock button.
this caused the caps lock button to no longer work, which was expected, although the shift key still turns caps lock on.