How does one capture a Mac's command key via JavaScript?

EDIT: As of 2019, e.metaKey is supported on all major browsers as per the MDN.

Note that on Windows, although the ⊞ Windows key is considered to be the "meta" key, it is not going to be captured by browsers as such.

This is only for the command key on MacOS/keyboards.

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Unlike Shift/Alt/Ctrl, the Cmd (“Apple”) key is not considered a modifier key—instead, you should listen on keydown/keyup and record when a key is pressed and then depressed based on event.keyCode.

Unfortunately, these key codes are browser-dependent:

• Firefox: 224
• Opera: 17
• WebKit browsers (Safari/Chrome): 91 (Left Command) or 93 (Right Command)

You might be interested in reading the article JavaScript Madness: Keyboard Events, from which I learned that knowledge.

You can also look at the event.metaKey attribute on the event if you are working with keydown events. Worked wonderfully for me! You can try it here.

I found that you can detect the command key in the latest version of Safari (7.0: 9537.71) if it is pressed in conjunction with another key. For example, if you want to detect ⌘+x:, you can detect the x key AND check if event.metaKey is set to true. For example:

var key = event.keyCode || event.charCode || 0;
console.log(key, event.metaKey);

When pressing x on it's own, this will output 120, false. When pressing ⌘+x, it will output 120, true

This only seems to work in Safari - not Chrome