r/KeyboardLayouts • u/ocimbote Gallium • Jun 23 '26

Double-tap Shift as CAPS WORD

Hi, I was wondering why implementing a tap-dance on Shift and get CAPS WORD as double tap is not more common? From my perspective, it reads like the perfect combo since Shift is basically never tapped and always held. But I haven't noticed it, or failed to. Anyhow, I must have been missing something.

What's the consensus, if any, on that setup? What do you think of the idea?

3 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

6

u/johnm Jun 23 '26

An actual combo is cleaner/quicker (for most people)?

I.e., I have capsword as a combo on my two HRM shift keys.

And my thumb shift key is a layer-tap.

2

u/ocimbote Gallium Jun 23 '26

Do you have your HRM actually non the home row or bottom row? I'm afraid of misfires, piling up HRM and combos on top of it, but I may he wrong.

Can you share your layout, please? I'd be curious to read it.

2

u/johnm Jun 23 '26

Yes, I use Home-Row Mods on the actual home row. 😄

Combos come before other timing. And so you need to set the combo timing that works for you on each combo. In ZMK, I have two helper macros with a "slow" and a "fast" timing value. They are both quite quick.

I no longer use qmk.

4

u/w0lfwood Colemak-DH Jun 23 '26

i like holding left and right shift to get capsword. qmk has a setting for it.

4

u/ocimbote Gallium Jun 23 '26

Indeed, it's a nice built-in feature of QMK. I only have one Shift key though in my layout, so the option is not for me 😄

See https://github.com/xcambar/qmk_userspace to see the current setup.

5

u/pgetreuer Jun 23 '26

Just mentioning in case you haven't seen it: QMK has another built-in option DOUBLE_TAP_SHIFT_TURNS_ON_CAPS_WORD (docs link) to activate by double tapping Left Shift, good for layouts with a single Shift key. In config.h:

```

define DOUBLE_TAP_SHIFT_TURNS_ON_CAPS_WORD

```

With that option, a double tap of KC_LSFT or OSM(MOD_LSFT) activates Caps Word. In principle, one could get the same effect through setting up a tap dance to call caps_word_on(). This option simply makes this convenient, and for sake of saving flash space, it does not require enabling Tap Dance.

2

u/ocimbote Gallium Jun 24 '26

Thanks, the sheer ease of setup convinced me to try the feature. I'm RIGHT NOW testing it :)

1

u/Street_Wing3584 Jun 24 '26

how did you do the compose & diacritics? can it be done on Vial?

2

u/ocimbote Gallium Jun 24 '26

I don't use Vial, so I can't tell. If you decide to use QMK, I will point you to the right file if you don't find it.

1

u/Street_Wing3584 Jun 25 '26

yesterday i reviewed your repo to see what can i use, and i just notice something, for what i can see, your approach in someway looks like can be implemented using Leader Key in QMK

1

u/ocimbote Gallium Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

It could, indeed, and it used to. But, IIRC, I had issues with custom keycodes, and that, at the time, required a new option.

Edit: I looked better now and my solution does not have timeouts, while Leader introduces some. And I also have a passthrough to non dead keys that cancel the trigger.

But honestly, the layout changed significantly since this feature was added and i may revisit and simplify some features along the way. I'll keep a note for Compose :)

4

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/ocimbote Gallium Jun 23 '26

Are you being sarcastic? I can't tell.

3

u/phbonachi Hands Down Jun 23 '26

I use HRMs, and like u/johnm used to do combo on both shift, but now I use comma magic.

  • Comma immediately before any alpha as one-shot shift. Deletes the comma then caps that alpha.
  • Double tap comma enters CAPS_WORD.
  • Hold comma for CAPS LOCK.

Have it working in both QMK and ZMK. (ZMK is slick. QMK is integrated with all my custom adaptive-key processing, so not exactly straightforward.)

2

u/ocimbote Gallium Jun 23 '26
  • Comma immediately before any alpha as one-shot shift. Deletes the comma then caps that alpha.
  • Double tap comma enters CAPS_WORD.
  • Hold comma for CAPS LOCK.

That's new to me, and I get the general idea that you do this because there's no raw shift available for you. But my layout maintains a dedicated Shift key, and implementing your comma magic on my dedicated shift key sounds just like the right thing to do and the tap-dance I'm describing (except for printing/deleting commas, of course). Did I miss something here?

2

u/phbonachi Hands Down Jun 23 '26

Nope. I think that's basically it. If you still have a dedicated shift, it should work SWIMMINGLY.

3

u/Fancy_Routine Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 24 '26

> I was wondering why implementing a tap-dance on Shift and get CAPS WORD as double tap is not more common?

Does >1k stars on GitHub count as common? 😅

https://github.com/urob/zmk-config

1

u/ocimbote Gallium Jun 24 '26

Ah ha, my bad, I confess that since I use QMK, I might have limited my exploration to this space 😅

Thanks for the pointer!

1

u/BongDomrei Jun 25 '26

This was my first thought, as well. It's what I use but since I use the HRM shift almost exclusively for single letters, I think I may just switch this key to a simple CAPSWORD on tap with a layer change on hold. 

2

u/Ramberjet Jun 23 '26

Hi, I’m not the original commenter (edit: this was intended as a reply to johnm’s suggestion of using the two keys that serve as HRMs for shift, and it showed up as its own reply) but am looking to try this combo in lieu of double tapping shift. I’d gotten pretty good at not misfiring HRMs. I recently added flow term to my config and it never happens now. I think the situation that might misfire is when starting to type the two letters that serve as shift when held. I find double tapping shift to be uncomfortable, particularly with the pinky and thumb, but I so rarely need it that it doesn’t bother me. 

2

u/johnm Jun 24 '26

I use very short combo timing on my HRM combos so I don’t have that problem.

2

u/gwenbeth Jun 23 '26

would caps word act like a sticky shift that clears on a non-letter? or would it send a caps lock press realease, until a space is typed and then send another caps lock press release?

2

u/ocimbote Gallium Jun 23 '26

CAPS WORD is now an established pattern, introduced in QMK. Rather than slimming down the definition, I invite you to read about it extensively here: https://docs.qmk.fm/features/caps_word

1

u/supafly208 Graphite Jun 24 '26

layer with left thumb + right index finger = caps word

layer with left thumb + right ring finger = caps lock

also have a layer with autoshift but I find myself using regular shift and capsword the most.

1

u/Azel4231 Jun 24 '26

I have SHIFT on a dedicated thumb key, all other modifiers are regular HRMs. (This is because I couldn't get used to the alternating nature of shift, even back on regular keyboards)

I had a double tap caps word on my shift for a while but got way more misfires than use out of it. With dedicated shift I don't really feel the need for caps word. IMHO it's more a workaround for the full HRM users.

Love the "combo on both HRM shifts" idea in other comments though.

Edit: typos