Unresponsive KeyListener for JFrame

Solution 1:

If you don't want to register a listener on every component,
you could add your own KeyEventDispatcher to the KeyboardFocusManager:

public class MyFrame extends JFrame {    
    private class MyDispatcher implements KeyEventDispatcher {
        @Override
        public boolean dispatchKeyEvent(KeyEvent e) {
            if (e.getID() == KeyEvent.KEY_PRESSED) {
                System.out.println("tester");
            } else if (e.getID() == KeyEvent.KEY_RELEASED) {
                System.out.println("2test2");
            } else if (e.getID() == KeyEvent.KEY_TYPED) {
                System.out.println("3test3");
            }
            return false;
        }
    }
    public MyFrame() {
        add(new JTextField());
        System.out.println("test");
        KeyboardFocusManager manager = KeyboardFocusManager.getCurrentKeyboardFocusManager();
        manager.addKeyEventDispatcher(new MyDispatcher());
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        MyFrame f = new MyFrame();
        f.pack();
        f.setVisible(true);
    }
}

Solution 2:

You must add your keyListener to every component that you need. Only the component with the focus will send these events. For instance, if you have only one TextBox in your JFrame, that TextBox has the focus. So you must add a KeyListener to this component as well.

The process is the same:

myComponent.addKeyListener(new KeyListener ...);

Note: Some components aren't focusable like JLabel.

For setting them to focusable you need to:

myComponent.setFocusable(true);

Solution 3:

InputMaps and ActionMaps were designed to capture the key events for the component, it and all of its sub-components, or the entire window. This is controlled through the parameter in JComponent.getInputMap(). See How to Use Key Bindings for documentation.

The beauty of this design is that one can pick and choose which key strokes are important to monitor and have different actions fired based on those key strokes.

This code will call dispose() on a JFrame when the escape key is hit anywhere in the window. JFrame doesn't derive from JComponent so you have to use another component in the JFrame to create the key binding. The content pane might be such a component.

InputMap inputMap; 
ActionMap actionMap;
AbstractAction action;
JComponent component;

inputMap  = component.getInputMap(JComponent.WHEN_IN_FOCUSED_WINDOW);
actionMap = component.getActionMap();

action    = new AbstractAction()
{
   @Override
   public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
   {
      dispose();
   }
};

inputMap.put(KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(KeyEvent.VK_ESCAPE, 0), "dispose");
actionMap.put("dispose", action);

Solution 4:

I got the same problem until i read that the real problem is about FOCUS the your JFrame has already added Listeners but tour frame is never on Focus because you got a lot of components inside your JFrame that also are focusable so try:

JFrame.setFocusable(true);

Good Luck

Solution 5:

KeyListener is low level and applies only to a single component. Despite attempts to make it more usable JFrame creates a number of component components, the most obvious being the content pane. JComboBox UI is also often implemented in a similar manner.

It's worth noting the mouse events work in a strange way slightly different to key events.

For details on what you should do, see my answer on Application wide keyboard shortcut - Java Swing.