I had started a command-as-escape-when-pressed-alone remapping years ago when Apple came out with their stupid touch bar laptops without a physical escape key which an old employer provided for me. It ended up working so well for me that I quickly started used it on my personal machine as well, which doesn’t have a touch bar.

When I started working with a new client who provided their own locked down machine, Elements stopped working (if it ever did on that machine, I think an update actually broke it).

Commandeer, which hooks into Apple’s Quartz Events framework instead of reading directly using a kernel extension, seems to work fine on my locked down machine.