Special characters are not showing up by holding down a key

ProfGin wrote:

My keyboard has started doing several strange things:

1. I used to be able to hold down a key to get special characters -- e.g., accented characters for vowels. Now nothing happens when I hold the key down.

2. My caps lock key has stopped working. If I press it down, the light goes on, but the letters are not in caps.

3. When I press the period key, the next character I type does not show up unless I press it twice.

I never had these issues before; they have just started. Thanks for any advice!

I have a MacBook Pro (15 inch, 2017), and Big Sur version 11.6.1

accent characters

From your Terminal.app copy and paste:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true

It sounds to me your keyboard is failing— see if you qualify:

https://support.apple.com/keyboard-service-program-for-mac-notebooks

Please tell us what you have on the list in system preferences > keyboard > input sources

Also try another keyboard (doesn't have to be from Apple).