Remapping Linux Modifiers with XKB

tl;dr

I remapped my keys using xkb resulting in Caps Lock being Super and the left Windows key being meta. This allowed me to use Gnone global navigation shortcuts while still using MacOS bindings in my JetBrains IDEs.

Xkb can be really difficult to work with, so hopefully for anyone else hoping to accomplish a similar goal will be able to use some of the information here to save some time. My xkb symbols file can be found here.

How I Got There

I find myself more frequently working on my Linux laptop, running PopOS, transitioning from a Macbook Pro. A pain point in this transition is breaking the muscle memory regarding shortcuts that I built over the years that make repetitive movements efficient. I decided that I like the MacOS hotkeys for the JetBrains suite of products, which I use daily, so I set off over the last weeks to find a way to allow me to use those without breaking the rest of the Linux ecosystem.

My first thought, and success, was to convert my Caps Lock key to a Hyper key using Xmodmap. I quickly learned that using Xmodmap wasn’t going to be an option based on recent changes to how Gnome loads keymappings. With that, my next plan was to use xkb to accomplish the same thing.

It took a while, but I was able to get a xkb mapping working to this end. It allowed me to remap Caps Lock to hyper, and I also remapped the Windows key to be only meta, instead of also super which is the default within Gnome. Removing super from the windows key ensured that any hotkeys that I did not or could not remap to hyper would not cause unwanted collisions. As part of this exploration process, I began to dig into programmable keyboards as well, getting excited about the possibility to solve my problems more thoroughly in that way.

I just received a new keyboard, programmable via QMK, and spent the day exploring possibilities with it. What I realized along the way is that I need to find a solution that combines the software solution with the QMK solution. A solution that would allow me to work efficiently from my new keyboard or from directly on the laptop.

The first challenge in this was that the hyper key in Linux is a virtualized key. However, with QMK, the hyper modifier is the actual modifer (combination of all other modifier keys). So I had to rethink my xkb solution. I bang my head on it for longer than I would like to admit before I realized that since I moved super off of the windows key, I could just as easily use that instead of hyper on the Caps Lock for the Gnome global shortcuts. The end result being my windows key being mapped to meta and my Caps Lock key mapped to super. My new keyboard is a Planck, so for easy access, I configured the escape key to act as super on hold and escape on tap.

Getting the xkb Mapping Right

Warning Making changes to your xkb files can cause the X server boot to crash, resulting in your keyboard not working on the login page for PopOS as or the GUI just not loading. I got myself into this spot once. I was able to get the system to boot and let me login by going into a terminal directly. I did this by editing the systemd settings at the bootloader (hold the space and esc keys while booting), then hit the E key and update the properties to include systemd.unit=multi-user.target.

  1. I created a custom mapping file. This file is self documenting, so I won’t go into what each part is doing here.
  2. I moved this file into /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols and named it just mymods.
  3. I updated the /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev file to include the line mymods = +mymods directly under the line that looks like ! option = symbol
  4. I updated the /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.lst file to include the line
    mymods               Add custom modifier mappings for super and meta
    directly under the line that looks like ! option
  5. I added the following XML in /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.xml nested under the <group> inside of <optionList> xml <optionList> <group allowMultipleSelection="true"> <option> <configItem> <name>mymods</name> <description>Add custom modifier mappings for super and meta</description> </configItem> </option>
  6. Finally, I updated my dconf files using the dconf Editor. I added a setting for org.gnome.desktop.input-sources.xkb-options as ['mymods'].

From there, each time I started an X session, the options are applied, ensuring my key bindings still.

So what are all the parts? The custom mapping file is the bulk of the logic, it defines what keys and modifiers I am changing and how I want them changed. The evdev* files are just configuration files to ensure xkb is capable of understanding the change I made to my xkb-options file. I found the best way to test my mapping settings, that doesn’t require logging out of my session each time, was to run the command setxkbmap -option "" -option mymods to clear out any existing options and apply my custom mapping option again.