How do I disable keyboard events in JTextArea?

The following example demonstrate how to disable some keys in JTextArea and JScrollPane using the InputMap. In the disableKeys() method below we disable the arrow keys including the UP, DOWN, LEFT and RIGHT.

Let’s see the code snippet below:

package org.kodejava.swing;

import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;

public class TextAreaDisableKeyDemo extends JFrame {
    public TextAreaDisableKeyDemo() {
        initialize();
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(
                () -> new TextAreaDisableKeyDemo().setVisible(true));
    }

    private void initialize() {
        setSize(500, 200);
        setTitle("Disable Keys Demo");
        setLayout(new BorderLayout());
        setDefaultCloseOperation(WindowConstants.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);

        JTextArea textArea = new JTextArea("Hello World!");
        JScrollPane scrollPane = new JScrollPane(textArea);
        disableKeys(textArea.getInputMap());
        disableKeys(scrollPane.getInputMap(
                JComponent.WHEN_ANCESTOR_OF_FOCUSED_COMPONENT));

        getContentPane().add(scrollPane, BorderLayout.CENTER);
    }

    private void disableKeys(InputMap inputMap) {
        String[] keys = {"UP", "DOWN", "LEFT", "RIGHT"};
        for (String key : keys) {
            inputMap.put(KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(key), "none");
        }
    }
}

The output of the code snippet above is:

Disable Keyboard Events in JTextArea

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Wayan

Founder at Kode Java

A programmer, runner and recreational diver, lives on the island of Bali, Indonesia. Programming in Java, Spring Framework, Hibernate / JPA, MySQL. To support me working on this project, buy me a cup of coffee, every little bit helps. Thank you.

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