Keyboard Test

About the Keyboard Test

The Keyboard Test shows every key your browser receives, and it separates the three things people usually lump together as “the key works”: whether the key arrives at all, which physical key it is, and whether one press produced one event. It runs as plain JavaScript in the page — there is no upload, no install and no account.

How the test area works

Keys are captured only while the status bar says Testing and focus is inside the test area. Typing in the site search, pressing a button or tabbing through the page is left alone. Press Stop test, or Escape twice within a second, to leave test mode and get normal keyboard navigation back; Start test resumes where you left off, and Reset begins a new session. Tapping a key drawn on screen shows what it is, but that is a pointer event rather than a key event, so it is marked as a demonstration and never counted.

key and code are two different answers

Every keyboard event carries both. key is what your layout turns the press into; code is the physical position, named after a US keyboard, and it does not change when you switch language. location separates left, right and numpad copies of the same key. That is why the drawn keyboard lights up by position, and why a shortcut can work with one Ctrl and not the other.

A held key repeats — that is not chatter

Hold a key and, after a short delay, your operating system starts sending it again and again. The browser marks each of those events as a repeat, and this test counts them separately from real presses. Chatter is different: one deliberate press that registers twice because a switch bounces. The test flags a key that registers again less than 60 milliseconds after its own release as a rapid re-press observation — worth repeating, not a verdict. The Key Chatter Test is built for that question.

Keys your browser never passes on

Some keys are taken before the page can see them, so a key that stays dark may be working perfectly.

• Operating system shortcuts: Alt+Tab, Ctrl+Alt+Delete, Win+L, Cmd+Tab and Cmd+Space are handled by the system first.
• Browser shortcuts: Ctrl+W or Cmd+W, Ctrl+T, Ctrl+N and, in many browsers, F11 act on the browser instead. The test leaves reload and developer tools alone on purpose.
• Fn and layer keys: Fn never sends an event of its own — the keyboard resolves it internally and sends whatever key the layer produces.
• Media, macro and brightness keys: often claimed by the operating system or the keyboard’s own software.
• Print Screen: on some systems it arrives only as a release, or not at all.

A key that does not light up

Work through these before deciding the keyboard is at fault.

1. Check the status bar says Testing, then click inside the test area and press the key again.
2. Check for a lock or layer: Num Lock, Fn Lock and a gaming keyboard’s Windows-key lock all change what a key sends.
3. Check accessibility settings. Windows Filter Keys and macOS Slow Keys can ignore brief or repeated presses on purpose.
4. Try another browser, then another computer. A key that fails everywhere is the keyboard; a key that fails in one place is software.
5. If a whole row or column is dark, suspect the keyboard’s wiring matrix or connector rather than one switch.

The guide Why a key does not register walks through each layer in order.

What stays on your device

Nothing you press is sent to a server or to analytics. The event log lives only in this tab and can be cleared at any time. The summary download is built on your device and lists which keys registered, how many presses and repeats there were, the most keys held at once and the limits of the test — not the order you pressed keys in, because an ordered log of keys is a record of whatever was typed.

Related checks

• Keyboard Ghosting Test — whether combinations held together all arrive.
• Key Rollover Test — how many keys register at once.
• Key Chatter Test — one press registering twice.
• Keyboard Layout Comparison — what the same keys produce on QWERTY, AZERTY and others.
• 5 Minute Typing Test — speed and accuracy once every key checks out.
• JavaScript Key Code Viewer — every property of a single key event.

Where this tool stops

Media keys, Fn-layer keys, macro keys and anything the operating system intercepts before the browser never reach this page, so they cannot be tested here. Timing comes from browser events and is accurate to about a millisecond: good enough to separate repeats and spot rapid re-presses, not a measurement of switch bounce or of latency inside the keyboard.