Formatting & Display Guide

TanStack Hotkeys provides several utilities for formatting hotkey strings into human-readable display text. These utilities handle platform differences automatically, so your UI shows the right symbols and labels for each operating system.

formatForDisplay

The primary formatting function. Returns a platform-aware string using symbols on macOS and text labels on Windows/Linux.

tsx

import { formatForDisplay } from '@tanstack/solid-hotkeys'

// On macOS (symbols separated by spaces):
formatForDisplay('Mod+S')         // "⌘ S"
formatForDisplay('Mod+Shift+Z')   // "⌘ ⇧ Z"
formatForDisplay('Control+Alt+D') // "⌃ ⌥ D"

// On Windows/Linux:
formatForDisplay('Mod+S')         // "Ctrl+S"
formatForDisplay('Mod+Shift+Z')   // "Ctrl+Shift+Z"
formatForDisplay('Control+Alt+D') // "Ctrl+Alt+D"

Options

formatForDisplay('Mod+S', {
  platform: 'mac',
  useSymbols: true,
})

On macOS, modifier order matches canonical normalization (same as formatWithLabels), with spaces between symbol segments.

formatWithLabels

Returns human-readable text labels (e.g., "Cmd" instead of the symbol).

tsx

import { formatWithLabels } from '@tanstack/solid-hotkeys'

formatWithLabels('Mod+S', { platform: 'mac' }) // "Cmd+S"
formatWithLabels('Mod+S', { platform: 'windows' }) // "Ctrl+S"
formatWithLabels('Mod+Shift+Z', { platform: 'mac' }) // "Cmd+Shift+Z"
formatWithLabels('Mod+Shift+Z', { platform: 'windows' }) // "Ctrl+Shift+Z"

Using Formatted Hotkeys in Solid

Keyboard Shortcut Badges

tsx

import { formatForDisplay } from '@tanstack/solid-hotkeys'

function ShortcutBadge(props: { hotkey: string }) {
  return <kbd class="shortcut-badge">{formatForDisplay(props.hotkey)}</kbd>
}

tsx

import { createHotkey, formatForDisplay } from '@tanstack/solid-hotkeys'

function MenuItem(props: {
  label: string
  hotkey: string
  onAction: () => void
}) {
  createHotkey(props.hotkey, () => props.onAction())

  return (
    <div class="menu-item">
      <span>{props.label}</span>
      <span class="menu-shortcut">{formatForDisplay(props.hotkey)}</span>
    </div>
  )
}

Command Palette Items

tsx

import { formatForDisplay } from '@tanstack/solid-hotkeys'
import type { Hotkey } from '@tanstack/solid-hotkeys'

interface Command {
  id: string
  label: string
  hotkey?: Hotkey
  action: () => void
}

function CommandPaletteItem(props: { command: Command }) {
  return (
    <div class="command-item" onClick={props.command.action}>
      <span>{props.command.label}</span>
      <Show when={props.command.hotkey}>
        <kbd>{formatForDisplay(props.command.hotkey!)}</kbd>
      </Show>
    </div>
  )
}

Platform Symbols Reference

Modifier	Mac Symbol	Windows/Linux Label
Meta (Cmd)	⌘	Win / Super
Control	⌃	Ctrl
Alt/Option	⌥	Alt
Shift	⇧	Shift

Parsing and Normalization

parseHotkey

import { parseHotkey } from '@tanstack/solid-hotkeys'

const parsed = parseHotkey('Mod+Shift+S')
// { key: 'S', ctrl: false, shift: true, alt: false, meta: true, modifiers: [...] }

normalizeHotkey and normalizeRegisterableHotkey

Core helpers produce a canonical hotkey string for storage and registration. When the platform allows Mod, the output uses Mod and Mod-first order.

import { normalizeHotkey, normalizeRegisterableHotkey } from '@tanstack/solid-hotkeys'

normalizeHotkey('Cmd+S', 'mac')           // 'Mod+S'
normalizeHotkey('Ctrl+Shift+s', 'windows') // 'Mod+Shift+S'

normalizeRegisterableHotkey({ key: 'S', mod: true, shift: true }, 'mac') // 'Mod+Shift+S'

Solid primitives normalize registerable hotkeys automatically via normalizeRegisterableHotkey.

Validation

Use validateHotkey to check if a hotkey string is valid and get warnings about potential platform issues:

import { validateHotkey } from '@tanstack/solid-hotkeys'

const result = validateHotkey('Alt+A')
// {
//   valid: true,
//   warnings: ['Alt+letter combinations may not work on macOS due to special characters'],
//   errors: []
// }

const result2 = validateHotkey('InvalidKey+S')
// {
//   valid: false,
//   warnings: [],
//   errors: ['Unknown key: InvalidKey']
// }