On a Mac, you can type special letters by pressing and holding the key that corresponds to the letter you want to accent. For example, to type an é, hold down the “e” key and select the accent you want from the options displayed.
However, you may not be able to type special characters by holding down the key. Instead of the letter overview, the pressed letter is repeated. Fortunately, you can solve this.
No special characters, just repeating letters
Do you press a key and the special characters panel does not appear? Unfortunately, there is no immediate solution and in most cases you will have to restart your Mac. If the problem is not solved yet, you can apply a forced solution.
Under macOS it is possible to enable or disable this function via a hidden option. Perhaps you or an app have (accidentally) disabled this feature in the past. Fortunately, you can turn this back on with a terminal command.
Solution to type special letters
- Open Terminal via Apps ▸ Utilities
- Copy the command below (command⌘ + c)
- Paste the command into an empty window (command⌘ + V)
- Press enter to execute the command
$defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true
Once you press enter you will see that nothing happens in Terminal, but the change has indeed taken place. Test it by pressing and holding the letter e in a website word processor. You may need to restart your Mac first to make the terminal change.
Do you want to just disable holding down a letter for special characters? Then change ‘true’ to ‘false’ in the above command.