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Background

I work at a research laboratory and use three different OS's daily. On the Windows and Mac machines I make use of Caffeine to keep those machines from enabling the screensaver while I work on a different machine (Linux doesn't have this problem). It's very annoying to have to log in again when I switch back.

Problem

When vim or gvim are in insert mode, the character <F15> sporadically appears in the document. I tracked it back to Caffeine after a bit of research. The website for Caffeine states that the software works by occasionally simulating a <F15> key press event:

Of all the key presses available, F15 is probably the least intrusive (I've never seen a PC keyboard with that key!), and least likely to interfere with your work.

So Caffeine is the obvious culprit. However, I still prefer to use my favorite text editor on all three machines, and don't intend to change that just to accommodate using Caffeine.

Question

Is there something I can put in my vimrc to make vim ignore <F15> key press events?

Edit For Clarity

I can't disable the screensaver timeout; it is set by the IT department for security purposes. So with the Caffeine work-around, in order to remain compliant, I have to manually lock my machines when I step away from my desk. That's not so bad; but unlocking them every few minutes is.

Also, I didn't write Caffeine, so I don't know why the developer chose to click <F15> once a minute. I probably would have done it differently, perhaps with a slight mouse motion or touchpad tap, as @Random832 suggested.

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    Why not just disable screensavers/timeout-to-lock on those machines? It'd be a much cleaner solution than to configure vim to work around Caffeine's strange behavior. Or at least make Caffeine simulate something like <Ctrl> instead of <F15>.
    – Ruslan
    May 20, 2015 at 16:48
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    @Ruslan The point of using <F15> is that it very rarely means anything and is generally ignored; <Ctrl>, however, is meaningful, and when triggered at the wrong time could cause unintended behavior.
    – Kyle Strand
    May 20, 2015 at 18:19
  • @Ruslan the OS is configured by the IT department to lock after a period of inactivity; running Caffeine allows me to bypass that, as long as I manually lock my machines when stepping away from my desk. Further, I don't have the source code for Caffeine, so I can't alter it.
    – Jonathan E. Landrum
    May 20, 2015 at 21:40
  • Why doesn't it just simulate that event you get when you tap the touchpad when tapping isn't enabled, but it still focuses the window you're over - but over the current window so it doesn't do anything?
    – Random832
    May 21, 2015 at 4:01
  • @Random832 that's a good question; I didn't write the program, so I don't know the logic behind choosing <F15> other than what's posted on the site.
    – Jonathan E. Landrum
    May 21, 2015 at 16:11

2 Answers 2

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You can map a key to <nop> (short for "no operation") to make it "do nothing".

This should make Vim ignore the <F15> key in all modes:

:noremap <F15> <nop> 
:noremap! <F15> <nop>

This will probably fix your problem, but I haven't tested it in your specific situation, as I don't have various Windows/OSX machines with Caffeine installed standing by :-)

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  • It looks like that did it! Thank you for your help.
    – Jonathan E. Landrum
    May 20, 2015 at 14:50
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    It should be noted that presumably dead keys like <f15> are often used when Mapping fast keycodes in terminal Vim. Example of a plugin that does such a thing is rsi.vim.
    – Peter Rincker
    May 20, 2015 at 17:54
  • I've tried the following to keep Vim and Caffeine working together while Caffeine is active. None of these work. My caffeine is sending the F15 key, which is ^[[28~ noremap <F15> <nop> noremap! <F15> <nop> noremap <^[[28~> <nop> noremap! <^[[28~> <nop> nnoremap <F15> <nop> nnoremap <^[[28~> <nop> any ideas?
    – rem45acp
    Aug 17, 2020 at 16:43
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    You can try binding the "raw key code" as noremap <Esc>[28~ <nop> @rem45acp; that ^[ is the escape character, and you need to either use <Esc> or type a literal escape character (by pressing <C-v> and then the escape key; but just using <Esc> is easier). You also don't use <..> for raw key codes like that.
    – Martin Tournoij
    Aug 18, 2020 at 3:53
  • @MartinTournoij I can confirm this works! Thank you.
    – rem45acp
    Oct 2, 2020 at 20:18
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The other answer (and suggestions in the comments) didn't work for me, I opted for switching to MouseJiggler instead of Caffeine and the F15 problem is no more!

https://github.com/arkane-systems/mousejiggler

(I am not the author or anything, I honestly just looked around for something else and found that this really solved my problem well)

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