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Keyboard Modifiers

The Keyboard.write() and Keyboard.press() and Keyboard.release() commands don’t work with every possible ASCII character, only those that correspond to a key on the keyboard. For example, backspace works, but many of the other non-printable characters produce unpredictable results. For capital letters (and other keys), what’s sent is shift plus the character (i.e. the equivalent of pressing both of those keys on the keyboard).

A modifier key is a special key on a computer keyboard that modifies the normal action of another key when the two are pressed in combination.

For more on ASCII values and the characters or functions they represent, see asciitable.com

For multiple key presses use Keyboard.press()

The Leonardo's definitions for modifier keys are listed below:

Key Hexadecimal value Decimal value
KEY_LEFT_CTRL 0x80 128
KEY_LEFT_SHIFT 0x81 129
KEY_LEFT_ALT 0x82 130
KEY_LEFT_GUI 0x83 131
KEY_RIGHT_CTRL 0x84 132
KEY_RIGHT_SHIFT 0x85 133
KEY_RIGHT_ALT 0x86 134
KEY_RIGHT_GUI 0x87 135
KEY_UP_ARROW 0xDA 218
KEY_DOWN_ARROW 0xD9 217
KEY_LEFT_ARROW 0xD8 216
KEY_RIGHT_ARROW 0xD7 215
KEY_BACKSPACE 0xB2 178
KEY_TAB 0xB3 179
KEY_RETURN 0xB0 176
KEY_ESC 0xB1 177
KEY_INSERT 0xD1 209
KEY_DELETE 0xD4 212
KEY_PAGE_UP 0xD3 211
KEY_PAGE_DOWN 0xD6 214
KEY_HOME 0xD2 210
KEY_END 0xD5 213
KEY_CAPS_LOCK 0xC1 193
KEY_F1 0xC2 194
KEY_F2 0xC3 195
KEY_F3 0xC4 196
KEY_F4 0xC5 197
KEY_F5 0xC6 198
KEY_F6 0xC7 199
KEY_F7 0xC8 200
KEY_F8 0xC9 201
KEY_F9 0xCA 202
KEY_F10 0xCB 203
KEY_F11 0xCC 204
KEY_F12 0xCD 205

See Also


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The text of the Arduino reference is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License. Code samples in the reference are released into the public domain.

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