Detecting is key press long or short in Python

Question

while True:
    listener()

I want to make a loop that detects is the key press long or short. How can I do it?

I've tried to make a function (keyboard module) that checks is the key still pressed after 1 second, but it didn't work.

def listener(key='p'):
    index = 0
    if keyboard.is_pressed(key):
        #Short press?
        index += 1
        print('Hm is it short?')
        if index == 1:
            print("It isn't!") #long press!
        else:
            print("It is!") #short press!
    time.sleep(1)

Here is the result:

Hm is it short? It isn't! Hm is it short? It isn't!

Answer 1

You can track when the key was pressed and when it was released. Then you can calculate the time passed between these two events and if it is greater than your specified time, you can interpret it as a long press:

import keyboard
import time

start = None
LONG_DURATION = 1  # second(s)

while True:
    event = keyboard.read_event()
    if event.event_type == keyboard.KEY_DOWN and event.name == "p" and start is None:
        # Key was pressed for the first time, capture start time
        start = time.time()
    elif event.event_type == keyboard.KEY_UP and event.name == "p":
        # Key is released
        duration = time.time() - start
        if duration > LONG_DURATION:
            print("Long press")
        else:
            print("Short press")
        # Reset start time to capture next press event as new start
        start = None

The reason why we need to check, if we already had a KEY_DOWN event is, that continuously pressing a key might trigger multiple KEY_DOWN events, so we use the check for start is None to measure the time between the first KEY_DOWN event and the KEY_UP event (and not the last KEY_DOWN event).