Using Caps Lock as Esc in Mac OS X

Question

How do I make Caps Lock work like Esc in Mac OS X?

Answer 1

In case you don't want to install a third-party app and you really only care about vim inside iTerm, the following works:

Remap CapsLock to Help as described here.

Short version: use plutil or similar to edit ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/.GlobalPreferences*.plist, it should look similar to this:

HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst
6
HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc
0

Restart! A simple log-out and log-in did not work for me.

In iTerm, add a new key mapping for Help: send hex code 0x1b, which corresponds to Escape.

I know this is not exactly what was asked for, but I assume the intent of many people looking for a solution like this is actually this more specialized variant.