How do you detect directional arrow keypresses in JavaScript?

December 25, 2022

I’m trying to detect keypresses on the left and right arrow keys. Here is my current code (nothing gets printed):

this.addEventListener('keypress', event => {
    if (event.key == "ArrowLeft") {
        console.log("Left key");
    } else if (event.key == "ArrowRight") {
        console.log("Right key");
    }
});

I’ve tried console.log(event.key) and pressing the directional arrow buttons as well, but again, nothing gets printed.

>Solution :

As you can read here keypress event is deprecated and shouldn’t be used

Use keydown or keyup instead

window.addEventListener('keydown', event => {
  if (event.key == "ArrowLeft") {
    console.log("Left key");
  } else if (event.key == "ArrowRight") {
    console.log("Right key");
  }
})