Big Sur 11.5.1 keystroke delays

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Level 1

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Big Sur 11.5.1 keystroke delays

Since installing Big Sur 11.5.1 there are many occasions when keystrokes don't get recognized and the beach ball shows up for a second or two before the keystroke is displayed. This happens in several apps; the most frustrating being in Mac mail. I can be typing a new email and new keystrokes don't get displayed sporadically, and the beach ball spins AFTER the keystroke is not displayed for a second or so. This also happens in other apps - Chrome, MS Word etc.

Also, when using the touch unlock, the same thing happens: no response to a finger touch fo 3 or 4 seconds. Usually requires 2 or 3 attempts to unlock with touch.

None of this happened with earlier Big Sur versions. This is on a 2020 Intel 16GB Macbook Pro.

Posted on Aug 8, 2021 9:57 PM

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Answer 1

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CT

Level 7

24,113 points

Aug 9, 2021 7:19 AM in response to travellerva

Does this occur for a different user, e.g., Guest ?

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/set-up-other-users-on-your-mac-mtusr001/mac

Does this occur after starting up in Safe Mode?

Consider the possibility of a third party software conflict. EtreCheck can be used to investigate what is installed. Give it Full Disk Access. You can post the report here. Someone might spot something.

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Answer 2

travellerva Author

Level 1

30 points

Aug 9, 2021 6:49 PM in response to CT

Thanks for helping. I tried the safe boot and using a test guest account. They both had the same behavior as my own account. It was particularly bad when attempting to scroll emails or Word documents.

So I resigned myself to having to reinstall macOS. However, as I prepped the system for doing that - taking backups etc - the problem seemed to have gone away. I looked at some other ideas and someone said that just doing a safe boot and then a regular boot can clear problems like this so maybe that did it. I;d certainly like to avoid reinstalling macOS if I can.

Nevertheless, I'll run EtreCheck and see if it digs up something.

Thanks again.

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Big Sur 11.5.1 keystroke delays

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