Caps Lock is a special key on your keyboard that makes all letters you type capitalized without the requirement to hold the SHIFT key. It is a leftover from typewriters, and is not actually required these days. If you are fed up with accidentally making your text capitalized thanks to the Caps Lock key, it is possible to disable it with a Registry tweak.
When the Caps Lock key is disabled, you will be able to enter capitalized letters by holding the SHIFT key on the keyboard.
Windows doesn’t include any option to disable or enable certain keyboard keys. However, it supports key remaping with a Registry tweak. So, if you remap the Caps Lock key to some missing key, it won't work and become disabled. Let's see how it can be done.
You must be signed in with an administrative account to continue. The change will affect all users of your operating system.
- Open the Registry Editor app.
- Go to the following Registry key.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout
See how to go to a Registry key with one click.
- On the right, create or modify the Binary value Scancode Map. Set it to the following value to disable the Caps Lock key:
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,00,00,3a,00,00,00,00,00.
- Restart Windows 10.
To undo the tweak, delete the Scancode Map value you created above and restart your PC.
How it works
So, to disable the Caps Lock key, we need to set the Scancode Map parameter to the value
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,00,00,3a,00,00,00,00,00
The 02 section indicates the length of the data to change. Literally it means the number of keys to remap + 1.
The value data 3a represents the Caps Lock key. The two pairs of zeroes (00,00) before it represent the key we are mapping the Caps Lock key to. In our case, we are just disabling the key.
To save your time, you can download the following Registry files.
The undo tweak is included.
Also, you might be interested in reading the article
Disable certain Winkey shortcuts in Windows 10
That's it.
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“So, if you remap the Caps Lock key to some missing key,…”
What keys are missing?
For example, on my keyboard I have no AltGr
To be honest, I really don’t know what circumstances would prompt me to WANT to disable the Caps Lock key. I use it quite frequently, especially in circumstances where I don’t have the ability to compose messages in “rich text” where bold/italics/underscore features are available or when I’m coding (in some circumstances it’s appropriate to use caps for reserved words when case is not sensitive) — a throwback to my old dBASE coding days, and if THAT doesn’t carbon-date me into the near-Jurassic days of computing then I don’t know what would! :)
//S//
Self-centred and selfish comment of the week. Who cares what you think. Some people prefer to have the Caps Key disabled. Why even comment…. is it just to throw your narcissistic ego around this here ‘new-fangled’ internet?
In other words you like to yell at people online
Doesn’t work for me on my new laptop. On my old one it did work. Strange… And yes, I restarted. Several times.
hello, im having an issie with this. I did what you said and it did work in dissabling the caps lock key which is awesome because it was stuck, but now it has also disabled my TAB key which i really need to work. any thoughts?
i WOULD NEVER eVER WANT TO DISABLE CAPSLOCK IT IS literrally THE best THING IN THE ITS NOT LIKE THERE IS A SHIFT KEY OF SOMETHING
haha))
Perfect solution to fix a computer for that ONE EMPLOYEE that LOVES to SEND EMAIL in FULL CAPSLOCK!
ahaha :)
When downloaded, the DISABLE file works… but the ENABLE never restores it.
So now my caps lock is permanently disabled.
Latest W10 as of June 2020
Very helpful- worked on Windows 10 Pro Version 1909.
Works perfectly! I bind stuff to caps lock for convenience in some of online games, but that makes using text chat annoying. This disabled the caps lock function BUT the key binding in games still works perfectly fine.
I am unlikely to enable this again since I almost never use caps lock for writing anything anyway. Thanks!
Doesnt work. Redundant info
I do not know about this, today I found out through your post. Thank you very much to the writer for the complete and step-by-step instructions.