The Gold key is a computer keyboard key used as a prefix to invoke a variety of single-key editing and formatting functions. Usually located in the top-left position of the numeric keypad on platforms such as the VT100, it is the signature element of a consistent user interface implemented by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) across multiple product lines.

It is used within WPS, EDT, and many other common VAX programs. The key, typically located as the upper leftmost key on the numeric keypad on different terminals, was not necessarily colored gold. Some DEC terminals would include keyboards where the gold key was labeled PF1, as on the VT100 and VT200, or was colored blue, as on the VT52. On some keyboards, the normal function of a key would be labeled on the lower portion of the key, while its alternate function activated with the GOLD key would be labeled above it.

The Gold Key is used to invoke single-key functions which may be located on either the main keyboard or the numeric keypad. For example, on the WPS-8 word processing system, the main keyboard key C is marked "CENTR", in gold lettering, on its front surface; the keystrokes GOLDC invoke that word processing function to center the current line of text.

The Gold key is a prefix key, not a modifier key. A modifier key would be pressed and held while a second key is pressed; the Gold key is pressed and released before a second key is pressed and released. In that sense, DEC and compatible software uses the Gold key in the same way that Emacs uses the escape key.

The base model VT50 terminal was equipped with a main keyboard only, and so had no Gold key. The model VT50H added a numeric keypad, including three unlabeled keys whose functions would be determined by whatever program was running. Located at the top left of the keypad, these were later named "PF" keys, and by convention, the first of them, PF1, became the Gold key.

The VT50H numeric keypad was of limited usefulness in editing because, from the perspective of the computer receiving its input, most of the keypad's keys were indistinguishable from their equivalents on the main keyboard. The VT52 terminal added an alternate keypad mode in which all keypad keys would send distinct character codes.

In his introduction to a 1990 DEC oral history presentation, Robert Everett, Fellow of the Computer History Museum, credited John T. (Jack) Gilmore with "designing Digital's gold keyboard interface".

Software using Gold key keyboard functions was developed across multiple generations of DEC computers.