Pygame Keyboard Input: KEYDOWN and key.get_pressed()

Pygame gives you the keyboard in two forms, and most games use both:

• KEYDOWN events: "this key was just pressed." Once per press. Good for jump, shoot, pause.
• pygame.key.get_pressed(): "these keys are down right now." Every frame while held. Good for walking.

This game uses both: arrows (or WASD) walk, Space jumps.

import pygame

pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((480, 320))
clock = pygame.time.Clock()

player = pygame.Rect(220, 240, 36, 48)
y_speed = 0
on_ground = True
running = True

while running:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            running = False
        elif event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
            if event.key == pygame.K_SPACE and on_ground:
                y_speed = -12
                on_ground = False

    keys = pygame.key.get_pressed()
    if keys[pygame.K_LEFT] or keys[pygame.K_a]:
        player.x -= 5
    if keys[pygame.K_RIGHT] or keys[pygame.K_d]:
        player.x += 5
    player.clamp_ip(screen.get_rect())

    y_speed += 0.6
    player.y += int(y_speed)
    if player.bottom >= 288:
        player.bottom = 288
        y_speed = 0
        on_ground = True

    screen.fill((140, 200, 250))
    pygame.draw.rect(screen, (80, 160, 70), (0, 288, 480, 32))
    pygame.draw.rect(screen, (240, 110, 60), player, border_radius=6)
    pygame.display.flip()
    clock.tick(60)

pygame.quit()

Press Play, click the game, then walk with the arrow keys and jump with Space. Hold Space: the player jumps only once, because the jump is on the KEYDOWN event.

Held keys: get_pressed()

pygame.key.get_pressed() returns a sequence you index with key constants. A pressed key is True:

keys = pygame.key.get_pressed()
if keys[pygame.K_UP]:
    player.y -= 5

Call it once per frame, after the event loop. Because True counts as 1, the difference of two keys gives a direction:

dx = keys[pygame.K_RIGHT] - keys[pygame.K_LEFT]   # -1, 0 or 1

Single presses: KEYDOWN

A KEYDOWN event has:

KEYUP fires when the key is released, which is how you make a variable jump (cut the jump short when Space comes up). pygame-ce also has pygame.key.get_just_pressed() and get_just_released(), which return a state like get_pressed() but only for keys that changed this frame.

Key constants

pygame.key.name(pygame.K_LEFT) returns "left", which is useful for a controls screen.

Shift, Ctrl and Alt

Check modifiers with a bitwise and on event.mod (or on pygame.key.get_mods()):

if event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN and event.key == pygame.K_s:
    if event.mod & pygame.KMOD_CTRL:
        save_game()

KMOD_SHIFT, KMOD_CTRL and KMOD_ALT match either the left or the right key.

Typing text

For a name entry box, add event.unicode on each KEYDOWN and handle Backspace:

import pygame

pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((480, 200))
clock = pygame.time.Clock()
font = pygame.font.Font(None, 40)
name = ""
running = True

while running:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            running = False
        elif event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
            if event.key == pygame.K_BACKSPACE:
                name = name[:-1]
            elif event.key == pygame.K_RETURN:
                print("Hello,", name)
            elif event.unicode.isprintable() and len(name) < 16:
                name += event.unicode

    screen.fill((30, 32, 48))
    pygame.draw.rect(screen, "white", (40, 80, 400, 50), width=2, border_radius=6)
    screen.blit(font.render(name, True, "white"), (52, 92))
    pygame.display.flip()
    clock.tick(60)

pygame.quit()

Click the game, type a name and press Enter. A full text field in a desktop game would read the TEXTINPUT event, which also handles accents and other keyboard layouts.