The fundamental thing that makes a game a game is the interaction with the player. This is achieved by a variety of means, with the keyboard and mouse on computers and through the touch screen and device tilting on mobile, or even through a gamepad on all the platforms!
To begin with in GameMaker you would use the dedicated mouse or keyboard events on PCs or the gesture events on mobile, but sometimes you need more control than these events provide, or you want to include gamepad controls or multiple different control options. For that you can use the different game input functions to get which buttons or keys have been pressed or released as well as retrieve the touches on a screen or how much a gamepad joystick has been moved.
There are a great number of functions for game input and control in your games, and so they have been split into sections related to specific input methods to make it easier to find what you need. The available sections are: