This button is a little different from the other button on the toolbar as it "sticks down" while the Keytest Utility is active. You can close the Keytest Utility by clicking on the button a second time. The button will "pop up" when you do and the utility will close.

When the button is down the Keytest utility will appear on the screen. it looks like this:

The Keytest utility shows any keystrokes that are sent to the system, either by the system keyboard or by an active Control Manager map.

Keytest Display

There are three columns on the Keytest display. The first shows either "Pressed" or "Released" depending on what the key actually did. The second column shows the key name itself as it should be entered into a Control Manager macro. The third column gives a description of the character. In most cases it's just the character itself, but for named keys there is generally a difference. For example, the second column would say "LSHF" (the Control Manager macro name for the key) while the third column would say "Left Shift", a bit more user-friendly designation.

The Keytest utility is quite useful in a couple of ways. First, it provides an easy way to look up the correct name for a particular key. Simply start the Keytest utility and type the key on the keyboard.

Second, it provides a method to see the output from your map file and compare that to what the keyboard would generate. This makes it easy to find errors in macros that aren't quite operating as expected.

The Keytest utility displays keystrokes, not characters. So, if you were to type an "A", the utility will actually show the left shift key being pressed, the "a" being pressed, the "a" being released, and the left shift key being released.