Caps Lock is the most useless key on the keyboard

A few years ago, I polled our readers at Neowin, asking them if they prefer to use the Shift key to capitalize their text or the Caps Lock. The results of this poll were not surprising to me at all, with only 12% voting for the latter. It further cemented my belief that Caps Lock is a fairly useless key on the keyboard, and we can do without it.

The Shift button is pretty handy in a variety of use cases, apart from capitalization of characters. Many games use it as the default button for sprint functionality, and it's also used by various pieces of software in shortcut combinations. Heck, Windows uses the Shift + Arrow keys to highlight text character by character, along with Win + Shift + S to take screenshots of select portions of your screen.

Meanwhile, the Caps Lock button placed above it is barely used for anything other than capitalization of characters to "shout" during arguments. Its origin dates back to the keyboard layout in mechanical typewriters, where it made sense to have a dedicated key that could hold down the "Shift" key so typists could type upper-case characters quickly, especially in legal documents.

But in modern Windows computers? I don't believe the Caps Lock has any real usage. Most keyboards today follow ergonomic designs where it's very easy to keep your preferred finger (or thumb) on the Shift key as you type in upper case. All Caps Lock does is annoy me when it turns out that I have accidentally pressed it, and my attempt to enter credentials fails because "Caps Lock is on". At this point, Caps Lock is just a relic that needs to die off.

The built-in Narrator in Windows does use this particular key in some scenarios. This is a fairly niche use-case, which, although important, can use other keys for the same purpose. Microsoft itself lets you switch from Caps Lock to Insert in Narrator settings.

The interesting thing is that Google seems to have realized how useless Caps Lock is for most people. Chromebooks have replaced the Caps Lock key with a Search key. Windows and Mac hardware, though, is still intent on keeping this fossil alive for some reason. As a person who solely uses Windows, that's the only platform I care about. There are ways to remap the key to some other functionality, but it's bizarre to me why the hardware for it is even present in the first place.

Microsoft isn't averse to changing keyboard layouts for Windows devices either. It encouraged OEMs to place a dedicated Copilot key on new Windows 11 PCs instead of the right Ctrl key, and while I don't particularly like the company's latest AI assistant, I wouldn't have thrown a fit if it were the Caps Lock key getting the axe instead.

There are so many better alternatives for the Caps Lock key in Windows. It could be used to take a screenshot, open Task Manager, launch Windows Search, toggle Do Not Disturb, and so much. It's just a shame that Microsoft isn't brave enough to encourage OEMs to ditch a legacy layout.

Caps Lock isn’t a feature. It’s a fossil - the appendix of the keyboard. But Microsoft, for reasons known only to the Registry gods, can’t or does not want to kill it.

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Posted Monday 6 October 2025 at 2:53 am AEST (my time).

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