The House of Keys is the directly elected lower house of Tynwald, the Manx parliament. Its companion is the Legislative Council, a smaller revising chamber whose 11 members are mostly chosen by the Keys themselves. The Keys are elected from 12 constituencies, mostly based on the ancient Manx sheadings, with each constituency sending two members chosen by plurality voting. Citizens of the island can vote from age 16, a notably young threshold; you must be 18 and a three-year resident to stand. The term of the House is normally five years, though it can be dissolved early. The Manx language name for the House remains 'Yn Kiare as Feed,' a direct reference to those original twenty-four seats.

The presiding officer is the Speaker of the House of Keys, an MHK elected by the other members. Unlike most parliamentary speakers, the Speaker votes on legislation, although they may also abstain. When the chamber is tied, the Speaker must cast a deciding vote. The Speaker also serves as Deputy President of Tynwald Court, the joint session in which the Keys and the Legislative Council meet together. The Keys hold considerably more power than the Council. Legislation rarely originates upstairs; the Equality Bill of late 2016 was a notable exception. Most laws begin in the elected chamber, with the Council acting as a check and reviser before the bill is presented for Royal Assent.

About once a month, the Keys gather with the Legislative Council in a joint session called Tynwald Court, presided over by the President of Tynwald. During the COVID pandemic, those meetings happened more frequently and sometimes remotely. Once a year, however, on Tynwald Day, the island's national day, the Lieutenant Governor presides, or sometimes a member of the Royal Family. The ceremony on Tynwald Hill at St John's is one of the oldest continuous parliamentary rituals in the world, with laws read aloud in both English and Manx before they are deemed to have force. The Keys are central to that ceremony, present in their role as the elected voice of the Manx people.

The House of Keys usually meets in its chamber in the Legislative Buildings in Douglas. Seating is allocated in alphabetical order by constituency name, organised into two rows; members who received the most votes in their constituency sit in the front row. The arrangement quietly reinforces the principle that nobody is permanent, that each chamber configuration is provisional on the next election. On 14 March 2017, the Keys did something they had not done since 1874. They returned to the Old House of Keys in Castletown, the original meeting place, to mark the 150th anniversary of the first elected House. From 1867 onwards the House had been chosen by popular vote rather than co-option, and the move from Castletown to Douglas in 1874 had marked the shift to a modern parliamentary body.

The Tynwald system is often described as the oldest continuously functioning parliament in the world, tracing its lineage back to Norse assemblies of a thousand years ago. The House of Keys is the elected element of that system, the part that ties medieval ceremony to twenty-first century legislation. Names like Claves Mannie and Yn Kiare as Feed sound archaic, but the chamber in Douglas is busy with debates over health funding, infrastructure, financial regulation, and the speed of TT racers. A new MHK takes their seat in front or back row according to how their neighbours voted, on a bench that traces straight back, by linguistic descent at least, to the four-and-twenty Keys of Man.