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alols
xcape
HISTORICAL RECORD2012–2024
alols / xcape · Not publicly available

xcape

Discover this repository through its Hacker News conversations.

Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
28Distinct people
35Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

A public description has not been verified.

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

I came across [xcape](https://github.com/alols/xcape) this week. It is a great little utility which can map escape to another key like control or shift but only when pressed…

zipperhead used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year35 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2012-04-01 09:38:49 UTC to 2024-01-16 19:30:44 UTC.

02462012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 1 submissions, 4 comments20122013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2024

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20122012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC514
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

35 sources
slightwinder·May 13, 2020
Oh, right. I knew I forgot something. I use https://github.com/alols/xcape for some while now. It's old, reliable and straight forward, just does it's job. Only downside is that it seems to be limted to X11. Not sure how well it will play with wayland. There are now also some alternative tools, with more ability, which allow overloading just on the side. I have them on my list for a while now, but not done much yet with them. - https://github.com/david-janssen/kmonad - https://github.com/mooz/xkeysnail - https://github.com/snyball/Hawck Oh, and for rermapping capslock there are also options with X11. I use setxkbmap -option ctrl:nocaps to map ctrl to capslock, then overload it with xcape -e "Control_L=Escape;" to add ESC ontop.
In In Praise of AutoHotKey
jrib·Jul 20, 2019
> a more interesting question would be how to map caps lock to ctrl (or something else) on hold, and esc on tap, across platforms. Definitely agree. I'm a big fan of that behavior. It would be nice to have a single project that supports it cross-platform. At the moment, I'm doing: On linux, https://github.com/alols/xcape . On OSX, https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements after some setup. Not sure about windows. Maybe there's some AHK script out there for it?
In Uncap - Map Caps Lock to Escape on Windows, Linux, and macOS
diffeomorphism·May 30, 2018
You can use https://github.com/alols/xcape or https://github.com/hanschen/ksuperkey for that. The windows key is a modifier like shift, alt or ctrl and hence at first it seems like a really, really bad idea to use it a shortcut by itself. The above programs hence implement the same behind-the-scences workarounds other desktop environments and windows use: treat pressing and releasing win alone as special. You can of course also use this for other keys, for example caps alone-> Esc caps+c -> ctrl+c Alternatively, I win+space instead of just win also is quite natural shortcut.
In Lobotomizing Gnome

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