ApplePressAndHoldEnabled - menu for character accents disappears shortly after login

Here we go!

Some explanation:

• SIP is disabled to allow Macforge + Spaces renamer (allows renaming of multiple desktops)
• It's running Big Sur through Big Sur patcher.
• While neither of these are standard configs - it was working fine until recently. Something else is happening.
• I'm a little alarmed that it says the SSD is slow - is that just because it's a 1st gen SATA SSD, or because it's running slower than a 1st gen SATA SSD should?
• Istat menus also runs on the guest account - I guess we can rule that out.

Things I'm going to try right away:

1. Get rid of that Silverlight plugin
2. Remove the logi bolt Launch Agent
3. Remove BlueStack (something to do with android emulation?)
4.    [Loaded] com.fvdm.AccentMenu.plist (Apple - installed 2021-08-05) - that was a plist designed to help the issue. It's removed.

Will do all of this, restart and see what happens...

Thanks. I tried to add another Latin language - it didn't seem to do anything.

I can confirm that deleting the entry also restores the menu when combined with a restart. However, the entry is again restored by something quickly after reboot / re-logging in.

As soon as the menu goes, if I do a read of ApplePres... it reads 1 - even if it was deleted before. Something is setting the value to 1.

Also, if I keep focus on Atom the text editor on boot / login - the menu persists. I can create a new file in Atom and it still persists. As soon as I move focus from Atom, I lose my menu and reading the ApplePressAnd... entry gives 1.

Maddening!

Oh - actually, it kind of fades away now.

So in atom, I start off with the full, working accent menu.

Then comes a stage where I can bring up the accent menu with a long-press, but selecting an accented letter will only enter a regular version of that letter.

Finally, the long-press menu itself stops appearing.

Wow!

Yeah, I think this might be the best way about it. It's actually a very recent installation - but I copied my account details over from a TB backup. That looks like a mistake now - should have started from scratch. Half of the extensions you've highlighted I haven't used for years - the same goes for the ones I removed manually.

To answer specifics though:

1. Alerted to 2 HDDs failing via SMART.
2. Was trying to figure out where the thermal throttling came from. That led me to replacing the thermal paste which improved things greatly for a while.
3. I have no idea what IntelHAXM does.
4. NordVPN was used for a very specific purpose (no, not that!), and deleted. That wouldn't be there with a fresh install.

I guess this is just a result of the computer being a computer and needing a fresh OS install after a while.

To give you a little more history, this one came from whatever it originally had in 2013, through to Catalina.

Extensions were installed to overcome limitations with macOS (in particular - window management, which still pales compared to Windows). I gave it a fresh install lately, but as I said, I was probably too scared of losing data so ported all my app settings over. It ran beautifully for a couple of weeks, but now it looks like it wasn't that clever - it's lagging in other areas too.

I'm getting ready for a reformat now and I'll go completely clean this time, reinstalling only what I'm currently using.

Ha - the snap-to-screen area is the number 1 standout feature of windows for me, support for high-DPI displays the second (greatly improved in windows since the start, and to be fair, much better in Big Sur than Catalina).

No idea how to remove it from Windows because I've spent so long researching how to best add it in macOS! (Magnet)

If you don't gain any benefit from those kind of features then I'd just be thankful and enjoy your workflow!

Thanks for your efforts on this error, I'll install Big Sur from scratch after my work this morning and will selectively install programs and addons one-by-one. I'm sure it'll be fine.

Also - checking on the entry in terminal still suggests that it hasn't been set! That's changed from before, where it was always reported as 1.

OK - I did all of that and amazingly it slightly improved things!

Restarted, accent menu back in atom. Stayed in atom for quite a while - accent menu remained.

Swapped to a couple of other apps - word and outlook - accent menu gone.

Swapped back to atom - accent menu still there! Restarted atom - accent menu gone.

It never ceases to amaze me how granular things like this can be. You'd think it would either work or not - but no.

Eagerly anticipating next suggested steps. I think I'll give it a couple more days before I admit defeat and have to port everything over to a new user account.