I want to perform keyboard event shift + tab on the focused element (to go to previous element) on Firefox browser

[Anil9844]

Hello,
I have a scenario where I need to simulate the keyboard event Shift+Tab to move focus to the previous element, which could be either a button or an input field. Currently, we use realPress(['Shift', 'Tab']), which works perfectly in Chrome. However, it does not work in Firefox, likely because CDP is not supported for Firefox.

My requirement is specifically for Firefox.
I am using Cypress version 15.3.0, and according to the documentation, this version supports advanced keyboard interactions. However, when I try to perform Shift+Tab using cy.press('Tab', { shift: true }), I receive a compiler error.

Also, alternatively, I tried to achieve this using cy.focused().type('{shift}{tab}')], but that did not work either. I received an error stating that {tab} isn't a supported character sequence.

Please suggest how to achieve this scenario of pressing multiple events like Shift + Tab with Firefox browser

[manimovassagh]

The cy.press() command in Cypress 15.x uses WebDriver BiDi under the hood, and the modifier syntax you tried ({ shift: true }) isn't actually part of the API — hence the compiler error.

Here's what works cross-browser (including Firefox):

// Shift+Tab using cy.press() — use the array form for key combos
cy.focused().press("{shift+tab}")

If that still gives you issues on your version, the fallback that works reliably in Firefox is to dispatch the keyboard events natively via the DOM:

cy.focused().then($el => {
  const event = new KeyboardEvent("keydown", {
    key: "Tab",
    code: "Tab",
    shiftKey: true,
    bubbles: true,
    cancelable: true,
  })
  $el[0].dispatchEvent(event)
})

Another approach — trigger the browser's actual focus management by using cy.tab() from the cypress-plugin-tab package, though last I checked it had some compatibility caveats with newer Cypress versions.

The native KeyboardEvent dispatch is the most reliable cross-browser option if cy.press() doesn't handle the combo syntax on your version yet.