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tactile

Tactile vs react-hotkeys-hook

react-hotkeys-hook is the de-facto React hotkeys hook, and it’s good at what it does. Here’s where Tactile differs.

Tactile react-hotkeys-hook
Key model event.key + event.code, layout-aware string parsing, keyCode-era assumptions
Context gating when expressions (scope == 'editor' && !readOnly) named scopes
Collision detection first-class (getCollisions()) not built in
Core framework-agnostic, Node-testable React-coupled
Introspection getKeymap() with formatted labels limited
Recording built in (useShortcutRecorder) useRecordHotkeys

When to choose Tactile

Section titled “When to choose Tactile”
  • You need the same shortcut to behave differently by context and want richer gating than flat scopes — when expressions compose (&&, ||, !, ==, in).
  • You care about international keyboard layouts and don’t want keyCode surprises.
  • You want to detect conflicts between shortcuts instead of discovering them at runtime.
  • You want shortcuts outside React too (vanilla, Vue, Electron) sharing one engine.

When react-hotkeys-hook is a fine choice

Section titled “When react-hotkeys-hook is a fine choice”
  • A small React app with a handful of global shortcuts and no context nuance.
  • You’re already using it and it works — there’s no need to migrate for its own sake.

Both are small and dependency-free. If you’re starting fresh and expect your shortcut needs to grow — palettes, modes, per-scope bindings — Tactile’s model scales with you.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”