Keyboard

DOSBox Staging captures your keyboard input and passes it straight to the emulated DOS environment — most keys just work without any fuss.

The one wrinkle is that your host operating system intercepts certain key combinations (Alt+Tab, Cmd+H, etc.) before DOSBox ever sees them. The keyboard_capture setting lets you override this, so DOSBox gets first dibs on those keys. This is especially useful in fullscreen mode or when a game relies on key combinations that collide with OS shortcuts.

All key bindings can be customised through the key mapper (Ctrl+F1 on Windows/Linux, Cmd+F1 on macOS). See Keyboard shortcuts for the full list of default bindings.

Configuration settings

The keyboard capture setting is configured in the [sdl] configuration section.

keyboard_layout

See keyboard_layout.

keyboard_capture

Capture system keyboard shortcuts. When enabled, most system shortcuts are captured and sent to DOSBox Staging instead of being intercepted by the host OS. Examples of captured shortcuts:

• Alt+Tab (task switching on all platforms)
• Ctrl+Esc (Start menu on Windows)
• Ctrl+F4 (virtual desktop switching on KDE)
• Ctrl+Left (show desktop on macOS)

This is particularly useful for Windows 3.1 and DOS programs that use key combinations which conflict with your OS shortcuts.

Possible values: on, off default