This Is What The Pause Or Pause Break Key On Your Keyboard Is Actually For

There are a lot of keys on a modern full-size computer keyboard that don't seem to do anything, but that doesn't mean these keys aren't really inactive. There are still real switches (mechanical or membrane) behind these oddly-named keycaps, it's just that modern operating systems don't do anything with them. The infamous Insert and Scroll Lock are probably the most well-known of these keys, but Pause Break is not too far behind.

Even if pressing this key while on a Windows desktop doesn't do anything, the key itself isn't useless. In some Windows systems, pressing Ctrl+Pause/Break sends a signal to terminate the currently running program. The same combination is used by some software, like Microsoft Excel, to interrupt the current task, which is useful if the software is taking too long to finish working. On Windows 10 and 11, the combination Windows Key+Pause/Break opens the About page on the System software, which contains a lot of important information about your machine, from the OS to its specs.

There are a few more things this key can do in specific software, but for the most part, it's much less commonly used now than it was in the past. If you wanted to, you could safely reassign it to a useful function like muting the microphone or taking a screenshot. Some keyboard firmware lets you do this natively, but anyone can achieve this goal with some patience and software like AutoHotkey.

The Break key actually precedes the personal computer by quite a few decades, being used in Teletypes at least since the 1950s. These machines were used to send information over long distances, much in the same way as Morse code did, but the process necessary to transform a signal into a printed message was simpler and required less labor. When command keys were introduced to some mainframe computer systems, the Pause and Break keys were some of the first on the list, along with Esc, Alt, and Ctrl. Only in 1986, when the incredibly influential IBM PC shipped with an enhanced keyboard, did the Break key take the place it still has on a lot of modern machines.

The key was often used to restart or shut off the machine, but different computers had different uses for it. The Pause key was used, and can still be used, to pause the continuous output in command line systems. On some MS-DOS configurations, the Break command was used to set and clear the Ctrl+C signal, which interrupted or stopped the running program; a function that the key retains to this day in some software, like Microsoft Excel.