OS X – Choose Between the Character Accents Popup and Key Repeat When Holding Down a Key

Apple introduced an iOS feature to OS X some years back changing the behaviour of the keyboard. Traditionally, if a key was held down, the letter would start repeating itself on screeeeeeeeeen. This was changed to a popup which displayed various non-standard characters. I was never a fan of this, even though it does indeed simplify finding accented letters. This cannot be changed through System Preferences, but a quick visit to the Terminal can sort things out.

Disable Popup / Enable Key Repeat

You will need to launch Terminal first — just press ⌘Space and type in Terminal.

Type in the following command and press Enter:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

You will need to relaunch the app that you are using. Logging out and back in should solve this system-wide.

Enable Popup / Disable Key Repeat

Should you wish to return to the popup and disable key repeat, you will need to replace false with true in the before mentioned command, like this:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true

Hope this helps!

The post OS X – Choose Between the Character Accents Popup
and Key Repeat When Holding Down a Key first appeared on Infinite Diaries.