Know how your $3,000 MacBook Pro keyboard keeps breaking? Know what's not broken and close to your keyboard? The touch bar. So I built a keyboard into the touchbar: https://github.com/RubenSandwich/TouchBarKeyboard. Problem solved.

But seriously, OP's tool has way more utility then mine.

I don't know why people type like that, but they do. I wonder if there's any correlation with people who stomp their feet when they walk. It's like they never picked up on the fact that you can dial back your own movement's impact instead of just smashing into stuff and letting it stop you.

It's SO convenient.

That way if I want to open a link in a new tab I can choose between opening it behind the current tab or in front.

Recommended setup (mine):

One giant button in the left corner that says "escape escape escape escape escape" (what it does should be obvious), and one tiny button in the right corner that brings back the normal touch bar. (And nothing else.)

Also, make those buttons white text on black. At least it's an OLED display, so parts of it you want "off" are actually dark.

Even just the lack of a bunch of distracting flashes as it changes when you switch apps is a relief.

[0] https://community.folivora.ai/t/goldenchaos-btt-a-complete-t...

I should have specified, but I assumed I implied it as this is what the existing browser middle click support achieves.

d<Escape> on the other hand would cancel the operator-pending mode for delete and do nothing.

For more complex modifications there is Karabiner-Elements, which is especially useful if you use Hammerspoon.

I am honestly surprised how much people complain without actually digging a bit. This is not aimed at you OP, don't take it personally. :)

Edit: granted, Apple doesn't do much to let us know about such improvements. Maybe it's in some release notes, but I found out about this feature while playing with the settings.

Using tlp, setting all settings in Powertop and undervolting with intel-undervolt will get you some seriously crazy battery life. Battery life on my X250 is better under Linux than it is in Windows with these changes.

For visual mode, apparently I just press v again. (I had to try it and see if I was subconsciously triggering Esc).

I had already weened myself off the Esc key, so the touchbar isn't that big a deal for me (though, i dont really ever use it). The terrible keyboard reliability is much worse, ugh.

As for visual mode... I just noticed something odd: in Neovim, <Esc> doesn't drop me back into Normal mode from Visual or Block-visual; I have to hit "v" again. The behavior doesn't happen in Vim itself (that is, <Esc> works as expected.) I wonder why that is.

Either way, I'd hazard to say that exiting Insert mode is by far the most common use case for <Esc>... to the point where I really wouldn't even call it "escaping" in the sense of "bailing out of a mode early".

For everything else, I'd just remap Escape to Caps Lock at the system level and call it a day. But that's just me, and even though I think the Touch Bar is nifty, I definitely get where some folks' annoyance is coming from.

Have to use a mouse on mine as the trackpad click switch has so much travel that I’ve accidentally moved the pointer off the thing I wanted to click on by the time it reaches the bottom. Tried using tap to click and fiddling with the settings, but on Linux it’s temperamental.

Sigh I'm just sad apple wont budge on a high end non-touchbar model

I have bound those commands to keys as well. So in my case I can swap workspaces by using CTRL+<arrow> and get that same view with CTRL+UP (but then still have to switch to mouse to select. I bought the apple trackpad recently because I prefer it that much—being able to do this actions one-handed. That said I'm also testing an ergonomic mouse so I lose some of that again—as I'm sure some of the case is for a lot of people. Hence all these other workarounds.

The travel on a butterfly keyboard is less than 1mm. It's hard to avoid bottoming out. When you say "light touch", it means truly feather-light. A keyboard that needs to be handled so delicately has no place in my world, and will pose difficulty for many.

That reminds me of catlike movement (very graceful, very limited impact and noise) versus doglike (lots of movement and noise, bouncing up and down).

And as it turns out, dogs use much less energy walking than cats do. Loud “doglike” typing isn’t necessarily a sign of inexperience, it’s actually energy-efficient and comfortable.

I’ve never had RSI but I seriously fear it suddenly striking whenever I have to use one of those super-flat Apple keyboards.

Or along similar lines: most if not all piano/keyboard players (I’m fairly sure, anyway) prefer weighted keys. Why do you think that is? It’s not just so you can play loudly or softly; a digital piano can be pressure-sensitive without having a weighted response.

Suggesting people who like travel on keyboards walk around stomping their feet is hilariously misinformed.

The timeout implementation could definitely be improved. In 6 months I've hat that computer I've never had it be a problem or even found it annoying in any way though.

Really feels a bit weird on other laptops, although on those that have two finger gestures it is bearable, or I just end up plugging an external mouse.

> I use esc way more often than I’d ever use capslock, so having it at the pinky is perfect.

I think every 2 years I have a proper use case for it ;)

I work on a lot of different computers in a week, and some of them aren't mine, so it's more useful for me to stick to the default map instead of getting things wrong on half of the machines.

And, I’d argue, keyboards with deeper travel require less precise movements. You can rest your fingers on the keys so you know where you are, and it takes a comfortable longish movement to press a key rather than a tiny precise movement.