Keyboard Tester

Overview

The keyboard tester is a browser-based key detection tool that lights up a virtual keyboard layout each time you press a physical key, making it easy to verify that every switch registers correctly after building or receiving a mechanical keyboard. It covers layouts from compact 40% boards up to full 100%, including ortholinear variants, so you can match the virtual display to your actual board before testing.

Choosing the Right Layout

Select the layout that matches your physical keyboard before pressing any keys. Available configurations include 10% (numpad), 40%, 40% Ortho, 50%, 50% Ortho, 60%, 60% ISO, 60% WKL, 60% HHKB, 60% TSANGAN, 65%, 75%, 80% TKL, 95%, and 100% full-size. A key that lights up on the wrong layout doesn't indicate a problem — mismatched layout selection is a common reason results look incorrect.

Cherry vs. SA Display Style

Cherry Style

  • Standard rectangular keycap look
  • Supports sub-legends (secondary characters in the lower-right corner)
  • Best for multi-layer or dual-legend boards

SA Style

  • Spherical keycap appearance with centered legends
  • No sub-legend support
  • Good for visualizing round-top keycap layouts

Sub-Legend Overlays

In Cherry style, you can overlay secondary characters on each keycap to check language-specific dual-legend layouts. Available character sets include Arabic, Cyrillic, Chinese, Greek, Hangul, Hebrew, Hiragana, Katakana, Devanagari, and Czech. This is useful when confirming that a keycap's secondary inscription matches your OS input method.

Keys That Will Not Register

Some inputs are captured before the browser sees them:

  • Keys pressed while a text field or dropdown is focused will not trigger the tester — click an empty area of the page first.
  • System shortcuts like Ctrl+W (close tab) and Alt+F4 (close window) are handled by the OS or browser and cannot be intercepted.
  • Certain media and volume keys may not match the standard key-code mapping and will show no highlight.

Fullscreen Mode

Click the fullscreen button to expand the virtual keyboard across the full screen — useful for presentation photos, layout comparison, or close-up key inspection. Press Esc to exit.