Show Keys

If you're into creating coding tutorials or any sort of video tutorial that requires various complex key combos, you might have looked into apps that display the keystrokes.

Using such apps goes a long way for the viewers, as they can see in real-time what keys are being pressed by the screencaster, making the whole tutorial a lot more encompassing.

Show Keys is one of many tools of this sort, however, it comes in the form of a Google Chrome extension. This means that it only works on webpages displayed by your browser.

Besides this obvious limitation (that it only works on Chrome), the extension has one more massive limitation: it doesn't work on various websites that restrict this functionality (such as Google subdomains, for instance).

The extension is also fairly "rigid" when it comes to how it displays the keystrokes. For example, it doesn't provide you with any sort of options in terms of customization.

You can't change the location where the keystrokes are displayed (always underneath the extension icon in the upper right corner), you can't change the font, colors, or anything of the sort.

In short, Show Keys is a basic example of the WYSIWYG philosophy. It's a simple Chrome extension that just displays the keystrokes and not much more.

It displays A-Z keystrokes (however, sadly, not in true- case), extended keys, and various other adjacent keyboard controls (such as Space, CTRL, ALT, Enter, Backspace, and so forth).

While far from being a complete tool for the job, it's arguably the easiest way to improve your screencasts, coding tutorials, or live streams if all you do is use Google Chrome.