Some apps let you click keyboard buttons or combinations to quickly navigate around.

Example 1:

hotkeys-links

Example 2:

hotkeys-search

Goal: If a user presses a hotkey combination on a keyboard, trigger a click on a link, button or element.

In our example a user will always have to click ⌘ Command + yourKey (Mac), or Ctrl + yourKey (Linux/Windows).

2025 Update # 

rails g stimulus click

// app/javascript/controllers/click_controller.js
import { Controller } from "@hotwired/stimulus"

export default class extends Controller {
  click(event) {
    const formElements = ['INPUT', 'TEXTAREA', 'SELECT']
    if (formElements.includes(event.target.tagName)) {
      return
    }
    this.element.click()
  }
}

<!-- clicking "n" will click the link -->
<a href="/posts/new" data-controller="click" data-action="keydown.n@window->click#click">New Post</a>

<!-- clicking "Ctrl+K" will click the button -->
<button data-controller="click" data-action="keydown.meta+k@window->click#click keydown.ctrl+k@window->click#click">Search</button>

<!-- clicking "Ctrl+Enter" will click the button -->
<button data-controller="click" data-action="keydown.cmd+enter@window->click#click keydown.ctrl+enter@window->click#click">Submit</button>

Option 1: With event listeners # 

import { Controller } from "@hotwired/stimulus"

// Connects to data-controller="hotkeys"
export default class extends Controller {
  static targets = ["button"]

  connect() {
    document.addEventListener('keydown', this.handleKeydown.bind(this))
  }

  disconnect() {
    document.removeEventListener('keydown', this.handleKeydown.bind(this))
  }

  handleKeydown(event) {
    // meta for Mac, ctrl for Linux/Windows
    let pressedCtrl = event.metaKey || event.ctrlKey
    let pressedKey = event.key
    if (pressedCtrl) {
      // find a buttonTarget that has hotkey set to the pressed key
      let buttonTarget = this.buttonTargets.find((el) => el.dataset.hotkey == pressedKey)
      if (buttonTarget) {
        event.preventDefault()
        buttonTarget.focus()
        buttonTarget.click()
      }
    }
  }
}

HTML usage example:

<body data-controller="hotkeys">
  <a href="#" data-hotkeys-target="button" data-hotkey="e">Edit</a>
  <button data-hotkeys-target="button" data-hotkey="s">Save</button>
  <button data-hotkeys-target="button" data-hotkey="d">Delete</button>
</body>

Option 2 (better): with Stimulus actions #

Instead of EventListeners, we can use Stimulus KeyboardEvent Filter

-<body data-controller="hotkeys">
+<body data-controller="hotkeys" data-action="keydown->hotkeys#handleKeydown">
  <a href="#" data-hotkeys-target="button" data-hotkey="e">Edit</a>
  <button data-hotkeys-target="button" data-hotkey="s">Save</button>
  <button data-hotkeys-target="button" data-hotkey="d">Delete</button>
</body>

import { Controller } from "@hotwired/stimulus"

export default class extends Controller {
  static targets = [ "button" ]

  handleKeydown(event) {
    // Check if Cmd (Mac) or Ctrl (Windows/Linux) is pressed simultaneously with the key
    let pressedCtrl = event.metaKey || event.ctrlKey
    let pressedKey = event.key.toLowerCase()
    
    if (pressedCtrl) {
      // find a button with data-hotkey attribute that matches the pressed key
      let buttonTarget = this.buttonTargets.find((el) => el.dataset.hotkey == pressedKey)
      if (buttonTarget) {
        event.preventDefault();
        buttonTarget.focus()
        buttonTarget.click()
      }
    }
  }
}

Important considerations:

  • Most Ctrl+yourKey combination are reserved by the browser. Different browsers can have different reserved combinations. A few characters that seem to work across browsers are k, u, b, k.
  • This brings value only to users with keyboards (not mobile devices)
  • Using accesskeys can have accessibility issues

That’s it! 🤠