Template:Key press/doc

This is the {{key press}} template. It can be used to illustrate keystrokes.

Example:

{{key press|A}} produces A

If there is an article about the key you can wikilink the key's name like any other wiki text. Like this:

{{key press|[[Alt key|Alt]]}} produces Alt

To illustrate keystroke combinations, just use extra parameters:

{{key press|[[Alt key|Alt]]|P}} produces Alt+P

{{key press|[[Control key|Ctrl]]|Alt|Del}} produces Ctrl+Alt+Del

If you are wikilinking the keys, please ensure that you are piping to the correct page (e.g. [[Control key|Ctrl]] instead of [[Ctrl]], which leads to a disambiguation page).

Wiki characters

Some wiki markup character, like the Pipe symbol, the Semicolon and the Equals sign, need to be entered using the {{!}}, {{;}} and {{[[Template:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]]}} templates:

{{key press|{{;}}}} produces ;

{{key press|{{!}}}} produces |

{{key press|{{=}}}} produces =

Key symbols

Some key names have a fitting unicode character. This template automatically adds such "icons" to the following key names:

{{key press|Shift}} produces ⇧ Shift

{{key press|Enter}} produces ↵ Enter

{{key press|Cmd}} produces ⌘ Cmd

{{key press|Opt}} produces ⌥ Opt

{{key press|Tab}} produces Tab ⇆

{{key press|Backspace}} produces ← Backspace

{{key press|Up}} produces ↑

{{key press|Down}} produces ↓

{{key press|Left}} produces ←

{{key press|Right}} produces →

Windows key

Menu key

There are no characters for the Windows key and Menu key. And we cannot use the "real" icons for copyright reasons. So we show approximate characters for them in the following way:

{{key press|Win}} produces ⊞ Win

{{key press|Menu}} produces ≣ Menu

Technical details

When you feed several key names to this template, it adds a "+" with no spaces around. This means it won't line wrap. But when you show key combinations for instance in a table then that might cause too wide items. Then instead manually build the key combination with spaces around the "+" so it can line wrap. Like this:

{{key press|Ctrl}} + {{key press|Alt}} + {{key press|Del}} produces Ctrl + Alt + Del

This template currently handles up to 5 key name parameters. If it gets too many key name parameters it reports the page into Category:Wikipedia key press template parameter needs fixing. This means we can easily find those pages and fix them, or we can discover if we need to make this template take more parameters.

This template calls {{key press/core}}, which holds the code that otherwise would be repeated several times in {{key press}}, thus simplifying the code.

See also

• {{pskeypress}} – For PlayStation-style controllers.