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MouseEvent: ctrlKey property

The MouseEvent.ctrlKey read-only property is a boolean value that indicates whether the ctrl key was pressed or not when a given mouse event occurs.

On Macintosh keyboards, this key is labeled the control key. Also, note that on a Mac, a click combined with the control key is intercepted by the operating system and used to open a context menu, so ctrlKey is not detectable on click events.

Value

A boolean value, where true indicates that the key is pressed, and false indicates that the key is not pressed.

Examples

This example logs the ctrlKey property when you trigger a mousemove event.

HTML

html

<p id="log">The ctrl key was pressed while the cursor was moving: false</p>

JavaScript

js

const log = document.querySelector("#log");
window.addEventListener("mousemove", logKey);

function logKey(e) {
  log.textContent = `The ctrl key was pressed while the cursor was moving: ${e.ctrlKey}`;
}

Result

Specifications

Browser compatibility

Desktop Mobile
Chrome Edge Firefox Internet Explorer Opera Safari WebView Android Chrome Android Firefox for Android Opera Android Safari on IOS Samsung Internet
ctrlKey 1 12 1.5 9 ≤12.1 1 ≤37 18 4 ≤12.1 1 1.0

See also

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https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MouseEvent/ctrlKey