How to get instant key input in Java?

As has been mentioned before, you can (and should) use the keyListener interface.

You can add the listener to any graphical window BUT that won't work for the console as there's no way to hook the listener.

The console input, System.In, by design, is an InputStream of characters, abstracted away from any underlying hardware. You can use a Scanner (which has some fancy methods like nextInt() ) to read the InputStream, or you can use the input's own methods: available() tell you how many bytes are lying in the input stream, and read() gives you one (waiting if necessary).

The problem with the second approach is the layer of abstraction. Often the console assumes it is going to be read by lines, and does not send any data to the system input until the Enter key is pressed, so the user can edit the last line of input. At this moment, the internal line buffer is fed into the input stream and discarded.

So, you can capture individual key events for a GUI window (JFrame.addKeyListener() ), but you can't reliably capture individual key events for the system console since the user might be able to "un-press" them using the backspace key or edit the input in the middle.

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Use the

KeyListener interface:

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/...

It cant be done by native Java alone ..

You'll need to use platform specific library.

show me what you got and we can work on it. any button can do something, not sure what you would want it to do, but show some code.