jQuery event.which: Track Button or Key Presses That Trigger Events

jQuery event.which: Main Tips

• The event.which (shortened as e.which) property returns the Unicode value of a pressed key or button that triggered an event.
• e.which stabilizes mousedown and mouseup events.

Usage of event.which

The event.which property was first introduced in the Netscape browser. It indicates which button of the keyboard or the mouse invoked the event.

In jQuery, event.which represents the which property for an event object. It's rather common to label the event object as e, therefore e.which is also available. As it is a property and not a function, the syntax does not require specifying any parameters:

$("button").keydown((event) => {
    $("p").html("The key pressed down was: " + event.which);
});

In the example above, the Unicode value of the last key you press when typing into the input field will be displayed.

Note: the mouse button values when using e.which are as follows: a right-click is 1, a middle (or mouse wheel) click is 2, and a left-click is 3.

Most Common Character Codes

In the table below, you will find the most common Unicode character codes that jQuery event.which can return. Feel free to check the less common symbols in this guide.

Arrows

Control Keys

Other Characters