A vim-friendly Mac Keyboard

I suspect the ultimate vim keyboard is the Happy Hacking Professional 2. The Control key placement is good for vim, tmux, and screen, and the removal of uncessary arrow and function keys appeals to me. However, it's $300, so I wondered if it's possible to hack the keyboard I already own into being a little bit more vim-friendly.

Swapping Modifier Keys

On a standard Apple keyboard the position of Control sucks. Fortunately, Apple gives us the ability to swap modifier keys around with no hacking at all.

Under System Preferences, Keyboard, Modifier Keys..., the Control and Caps Lock keys can be switched:

It only took me a few days to get used to this, and it works well for those of us who type Control a million times more often than Caps Lock.

Use hjkl Instead of Arrows

KeyRemap4Macbook allows any key to be remapped, and key repeats to be accelerated. Of interest to us is the 'Vi mode' setting list, and 'Ubiquitous Vim Bindings'. I selected 'Fn+hjkl to Left/Down/Up/Right' so I can use hjkl to move the cursor in any application.

KeyRemap4Macbook requires a reboot after installation, but once it's running the settings can be changed and experimented with at any time.