My keyboard stopped repeating - how to fix?

Question

I have both an internal and external keyboard but the key-repeat has stopped working. I've tried changing both 'Key Repeat' and 'Delay Until Repeat' as shown below but no setting seems to be helping.

enter image description here

This is a brand new mac (5 weeks old).

What OS are your using? Did you recently upgrade to Lion/Mountain Lion? What computer model are you using? — de_an777, Jul 31 '12 at 21:29
Try this command: defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false — pasawaya, Aug 01 '12 at 07:59
I have the same problem, and my Mac is new from 3 days ! I have Mavericks. Key repeating was working, but not fast enough to my taste. So I went to the Keyboard System Prefs, and now key repeating has stopped working. — Nicolas Barbulesco, Dec 01 '13 at 10:39
@NicolasBarbulesco Did you get the key repeating issue resolved? Actually I am on El Capitan now. — WestCoastProjects, Feb 23 '16 at 17:06
I can confirm that key repeat is not working on this 13" MBP, 1 week old, El Capitan, 10.11.3. — , Mar 07 '16 at 14:21

pasawaya · Accepted Answer · 2013-10-16T02:54:23.030

59

Well it looks like there are a couple solutions:

Option 1. Enter this in terminal: defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false. To disable repeating keys again, enter the same command except change the false to true.

Option 2. Download Mountain Tweaks (I assume you're on Mountain Lion, if not, download Lion Tweaks) and click the "Yes" option for "Enable Repeating Keys":

enter image description here

edited Oct 16 '13 at 02:54

answered Aug 01 '12 at 08:05

pasawaya

2,306

4

Don't forget to reload applications you use so as to allow this feature to take effect. They don't catch this option "on fly" quite often – Nick Roz Jul 11 '16 at 12:35
application restart is definitely necessary – ProblemsOfSumit Dec 30 '16 at 10:09
Weird that tinkering with 'Key Repeat' speed in sys prefs didn't fix this. But the line of code in terminal did, for me anyway. – stevec Feb 08 '21 at 16:40
1

FYI the restart is not necessary in BigSur, also this is an insane setting..... – Ben Winding Aug 11 '21 at 03:47

score 17 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 11 '16 at 15:03

17

If running

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

seems to have no effect, try a restart. This seems to be necessary in more recent versions of OS X.

edited Jul 11 '16 at 15:03

nohillside

100,768

answered Mar 13 '13 at 20:36

user45062

181
1
2

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In my case it was enough to type "exit" in the terminal. That seems to have enabled the option globally. – laurent Feb 14 '18 at 15:37
{on Mojave) This works immediately in the terminal where the command was issued, but applications (Firefox, Word, etc.) need to be restarted for key repeat to work. – John Churchill Nov 04 '19 at 00:30

krulik · Answer 3 · 2021-11-28T11:46:59.403

By default, on macOS (since at least OS X Lion), when you hold down a key, it will display a popup allowing you pick a special character if there are any assigned to that particular key:

If a key doesn’t have any special characters behind it and you hold it down, nothing will happen.

As stated in Apple's docs:

You can add accent marks and special characters to some letters. For example, click and hold the a key to type à, á, â or other characters.

If you set the Key Repeat slider to Off, special characters won’t appear when you hold down a key.

Set how quickly a key repeats on Mac

To disable special characters popup and return traditional behaviour with key repeat, run following command in Terminal:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

Then restart applications (or computer) to update settings.

My keyboard stopped repeating - how to fix?

3 Answers3