The keydown
event is fired when a key is pressed.
Unlike the keypress
event, the keydown
event is fired for all keys, regardless of whether they produce a character value.
Bubbles | Yes |
---|---|
Cancelable | Yes |
Interface | KeyboardEvent |
Event handler property | onkeydown |
The keydown
and keyup
events provide a code indicating which key is pressed, while keypress
indicates which character was entered. For example, a lowercase "a" will be reported as 65 by keydown
and keyup
, but as 97 by keypress
. An uppercase "A" is reported as 65 by all events.
Keyboard events are only generated by <inputs>
, <textarea>
and anything with the contentEditable
attribute or with tabindex="-1"
.
Since Firefox 65, the keydown
and keyup
events are now fired during IME composition, to improve cross-browser compatibility for CJKT users (bug 354358, also see keydown and keyup events are now fired during IME composition for more useful details). To ignore all keydown
events that are part of composition, do something like this (229 is a special value set for a keyCode
relating to an event that has been processed by an IME):
eventTarget.addEventListener("keydown", event => { if (event.isComposing || event.keyCode === 229) { return; } // do something });
Examples
addEventListener keydown example
This example logs the KeyboardEvent.code
value whenever you press down a key inside the <input>
element.
<input placeholder="Click here, then press down a key." size="40"> <p id="log"></p>
const input = document.querySelector('input'); const log = document.getElementById('log'); input.addEventListener('keydown', logKey); function logKey(e) { log.textContent += ` ${e.code}`; }
onkeydown equivalent
input.onkeydown = logKey;
Specifications
Specification | Status |
---|---|
UI Events | Working Draft |
Browser compatibility
Desktop | Mobile | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
keydown event | Chrome Full support Yes | Edge Full support ≤18 | Firefox Full support Yes | IE ? | Opera ? | Safari ? | WebView Android Full support Yes | Chrome Android Full support Yes | Firefox Android Full support Yes | Opera Android ? | Safari iOS ? | Samsung Internet Android Full support Yes |
Legend
- Full support
- Full support
- Compatibility unknown
- Compatibility unknown