Disable the Character Accent Menu and Enable Key Repeat in Mac OS X
If you hold down many keys in Mac OS X, particularly vowels but also letters like j and n, a little popup menu appears showing an accented character selection window. This is a fairly new change to OS X behavior, replacing the long existing default of a repeating key press instead, where if you hold down a key the letter will repeat endlessly until you let goooooooooooo with repeating letters of that which is held down.
If you want to turn off the character accent selector and re-enable key repetition with extended keypresses, you can easily do so through a defaults write command.
To get started, launch the Terminal app and enter the following command onto a single command line (it’s often easiest to just copy and paste the defaults string) and then hit the Return key:
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false
You shouldn’t need to do anything for the change to take effect, but relaunching apps may be beneficial if you don’t immediately notice a difference.
Try it out, and you can can now repeat keys as usual rather than have the iOS-style accented popup appear.
If you want to bring the accented character selector menu back with a long keypress, you’ll use the same defaults command string in the Terminal, but use true instead, like so:
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true
Most apps need to be relaunched for the change to take place again.
This works in all versions of OS X where the Press And Hold feature exists, including Macs with Mavericks, Mountain Lion, and Lion.
That’s cool, but then is there a corresponding keyboard shortcut for bringing up the Character Accent Menu when one needs it…?
Unfortunately no, not unless you bind it yourself in Keyboards Services. That is why this tip is not the best, but you can always use the Option key press for åççéñts
How do I relaunch it?
Just quit an app and then open it again, for it to be system wide you might want to just reboot
[…] osxdailly] __spr_config = { pid: '4e398ab8c2b219497d000043', title: 'How To: Disable Accent Character Menu […]
Cool!!!!! It works perfectly!!!!!! Great job William… Thanks!
THIS SHOULD BE AN OPTION IN SYSTEM PREFERENCES ANOTHER COUNTDOWN APPLE.
Works perfectly – thanks much for the tip. I agree this should be an option in System Preferences somewhere.
Thanks very much, you have been a great help.
You can install OnyX, too.
It has a simple option where you can activate/deactivate the key repeat/vowel accents
where do i type this in at? :(
You type the commands into Terminal, as is stated in the article.
[…] 2: You may also want to turn off the character accent menu when you press and hold a […]
Hi! Is this supposed to work for MacBook Air too? I tried doing it in the Terminal, like you said, but it still doesn’t work :'( Is there any other way to fix this? The accent pop-up thing is okay, but what’s more important for me is the repetitive letters so please help :)
It didn’t work for me in Maveriks from the first try. I changed false to NO and it seems to stick now. Also, don’t forget to restart any app after setting this in terminal.
Meanwhile, THIS is AN OPTION IN SYSTEM PREFERENCES what are you doing apple ……
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!
My accent pop-up suddenly disappeared, and now I only get repetitive letters when I hold them down. But I didn’t “do” anything! I’ve never launched Terminal, so how did it change on it’s own? Eeek! ;-/
Hi, I had the same thing happen to me. My accent popo-up ust disappeared from one day to the other, and I can’t get it back. Going to try a restart to see if that fixes this.
I tried the above procedure with Terminal, using:
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true
but that didn’t seem to do anything either.
This should most certainly be a system preference to be turned on and off at will.
Restart took care of it. I guess the above procedure and/or the restart did it. I have my accent pop-up back.
Thanks for the tips
Awesome tip! Thank you very much :)
Fantastic…it worked. :)