KeyboardEvent: shiftKey property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The KeyboardEvent.shiftKey read-only property is a boolean value that indicates if the shift key was pressed (true) or not (false) when the event occurred.

The pressing of the shift key may change the key of the event too. For example, pressing B generates key: "b", while simultaneously pressing Shift generates key: "B".

Value

A boolean value.

Examples

html
<html lang="en-US">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />
    <title>shiftKey example</title>

    <script>
      function showChar(e) {
        alert(
          "Key Pressed: " +
            String.fromCharCode(e.charCode) +
            "\n" +
            "charCode: " +
            e.charCode +
            "\n" +
            "SHIFT key pressed: " +
            e.shiftKey +
            "\n" +
            "ALT key pressed: " +
            e.altKey +
            "\n",
        );
      }
    </script>
  </head>

  <body onkeypress="showChar(event);">
    <p>
      Press any character key, with or without holding down the SHIFT key.<br />
      You can also use the SHIFT key together with the ALT key.
    </p>
  </body>
</html>

Specifications

Specification
UI Events
# dom-keyboardevent-shiftkey

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also