Keyboard

Limited availabilitySecure context

The Keyboard interface of the Keyboard API provides functions that retrieve keyboard layout maps and toggle capturing of key presses from the physical keyboard.

A list of valid code values is found in the UI Events KeyboardEvent code Values spec.

Instance properties

Also inherits properties from its parent interface, EventTarget.

Instance methods

Also inherits methods from its parent interface, EventTarget.

• getLayoutMap() Experimental
  • : Returns a Promise that resolves with an instance of KeyboardLayoutMap which is a map-like object with functions for retrieving the strings associated with specific physical keys.
• lock() Experimental
  • : Returns a Promise that resolves after enabling the capture of key presses for any or all of the keys on the physical keyboard.
• unlock() Experimental
  • : Unlocks all keys captured by the lock() method and returns synchronously.

Example

Keyboard mapping

The following example demonstrates how to get the location- or layout-specific string associated with the key that corresponds to the ‘W’ key on an English QWERTY keyboard.

if (navigator.keyboard) {
  const keyboard = navigator.keyboard;
  keyboard.getLayoutMap().then((keyboardLayoutMap) => {
    const upKey = keyboardLayoutMap.get("KeyW");
    window.alert(`Press ${upKey} to move up.`);
  });
} else {
  // Do something else.
}

Keyboard locking

The following example captures the W, A, S, and D keys, call lock() with a list that contains the key code attribute value for each of these keys:

navigator.keyboard.lock(["KeyW", "KeyA", "KeyS", "KeyD"]);

This captures these keys regardless of which modifiers are used with the key press. Assuming a standard United States QWERTY layout, registering KeyW ensures that W, Shift+W, Control+W, Control+Shift+W, and all other key modifier combinations with W are sent to the app. The same applies to for KeyA, KeyS, and KeyD.

Specifications

Browser compatibility