Key repeat is not working on Big Sur

I forgot to mention... did you logout and login again?

Turn off the accented character menu:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

then logout, login and it works. Conversely, of course, one can use the same with "true" instead of "false", logout, login.

I have just tried and it is working as expected on my mac.

Some keys works though... All punctuation keys (_,-,=, etc) are repeating fine.

But letters and digits are not!

Some letters (o, e, a, etc) show alternative characters on long-press. I believe this is the root cause...

I have a mid-2015 MacBook Pro and experiencing the exact same issue. Key repeats worked as expected prior to upgrading to macOS Big Sur 11.0.1. Adjusting the "Delay until Repeat" and "Key Repeat" sliders in Keyboard System Preferences does nothing to resolve the issue. It's worth noting that Special Characters still works for supporting letters. However, key repeats appear broken after upgrading to Big Sur. As with every major macOS release, bugs are expected... Especially when introducing new features. However, it's very surprising that such a basic keyboard function is non-functional after a major release. Apple can do better... I expect more.

There is a setting for this, and it is nothing new in Big Sur.

To turn off the accented character menu and reinstate repeating for keys such as a, e, and so on:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

There are two different possible behaviors when you click and hold a key like "a":

1) Keep repeating that letter

2) Present a menu that allows to choose several options like "á", "à", "ã", "ä", "å" and such

Depending on how you like to work, or on what language you write in, you may prefer one or the other.

That is governed by a preference setting as I discussed above; it requires a Terminal command, so it is not something you would find, say, in System Preferences, so it is not at all obvious.

The "fuss" is that someone was used to one behavior and unexpectedly was getting the other.

Yeah I understand the concern of the author, I'm just not sure that it's necessarily a "problem" to solve, I mean, which language in the world requires repeated characters. Getting used to something that's not even useful to us doesn't mean we need to exert efforts to restore it, hence my question of what use is it in practice.

My post is out of curiosity if users have real-world use-cases for key repeat on alphanumeric characters--not trying to debate against the matter or the solution provided. 😊

aenero wrote:

My post is out of curiosity if users have real-world use-cases for key repeat on alphanumeric characters

I was once curious about this too, but after seeing hundreds of people complain about it since Apple made popup menus the default 10 years ago, I have come to the conclusion that there somehow must be a common use for this.

Another curiosity you may encounter is the large number of users who to use caps lock instead of shift to create single capital letters.

Yes it is very disappointing honestly.. My mac is not even a year old and I have to deal with these bugs:

• Delayed typing response
• Inability to adjust or customize keyboard setting
• General lags

Just upgraded to macOS 11.1 and it did nothing to fix the repeat function issue. This is most aggravating. Has anyone figured out a solution to this? Or are we again waiting on Apple?

I BET this will be called "a feature not a bug" and will be left at that.

And we have to resort to a third party solution for a working keyboard... 🤦‍♂️ 🤦‍♀️ 🤦

What's the fuss all about? Why would I need to type repeated characters like that? Are we trying to solve non-problems here?