I think I finally understand Kafkaesque.

There is no escape.

Try:

Ctrl and [

That should send the same as Esc (ASCII 27).

I seem to remember this working on a new iPad Pro keyboard.

This is incredible. I think I needed this about 40 years when typing on a small Teletype (non-ASR33) without an escape key.

The reason is interesting as well. Paraphrasing from this blog post[0]

When you format the ASCII table in four columns, you can see `ESC` and `[` on the same row. Holding `CTRL` essentially ~lops off the first three bits~ subtracts 64, resulting in `ESC`

   ...
   ...
   0011000 CAN    0111000 8    1011000 X    1111000 x
   0011001 EM     0111001 9    1011001 Y    1111001 y
   0011010 SUB    0111010 :    1011010 Z    1111010 z
   0011011 ESC    0111011 ;    1011011 [    1111011 {
   0011100 FS     0111100 <    1011100 \    1111100 |
   0011101 GS     0111101 =    1011101 ]    1111101 }
   0011110 RS     0111110 >    1011110 ^    1111110 ~
   0011111 US     0111111 ?    1011111 _    1111111 DEL

[0] http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/things-every-hacker-once-knew/

> Holding `CTRL` essentially lops off the first three bits

No, it inverts the 7th bit (or subtracts 64).

The Linux `ascii(7)` man page has a similar table, but with 2 columns. The first 32 control characters listed there have their "caret notation" character in the opposite column.

Is this why the symbol for Ctrl is also commonly the symbol for xor?!

I'm not sure. I think the caret is just a prefix to make it distinguishable from the normal letters.

It is the reason why Ctrl+i in a terminal is the same as Tab though. Likewise for Ctrl+m == Enter.

Standard adaptation for touchbar Macs, too. I find it less of a disruption from the home row.

Caps lock is right on the home row.

Oh, right. I have control remapped on caps lock, so it's caps lock + [.

This is where https://github.com/alols/xcape is amazing.

I'm not sure, but I think Karabiner can be configured to act the same way.

Karabiner is amazing. I have caps lock mapped to ctrl-cmd-alt when pressed with some other key, and esc when pressed and released alone.

I just remap caps lock to escape.

Not as easy to remap keys though, on the iPad (keyboard cover) unless I’m not aware.

It's very easy to remap on the touchbar macs though.

Something else to try is Ctrl-3. This commonly gives the ESC code.

You can also ctrl-c

Where's the escape key on my Macbook Pro?

Same place as before, it's just no longer as squishy

I missed the lowercase i on first read. I'll comment anyway in case this helps others. Hacker's Keyboard from f-droid has an escape key. If using the compact layout you can get to it by holding the tab key. I think on the full layout it has a more traditional placement. I'm not sure what alternative keyboards iOS has.

Android at least lets you install custom keyboards - and there are hacker keyboards that have escape on ...

Very useful for SSH and termux.

iOS has the same feature: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

There's none, use Ctrl-[, duh.