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Cannot type accents by holding in certain apps

Macs have a function wherein you can hold a letter and it'll display various accents which you can then use. I love this feature, but it isn't working in certain apps; it works just fine on chrome and textedit for example, but doesn't work in safari and pages. Mainly the latter is a serious issue since I use accents quite a lot, so not being able to use this feature is a bit dissapointing. Does anyone know how I could fix this?


P.S. I am aware that it is possible to type certain accents using alt+e, alt+u, etc, but this is not what I want.

Posted on Sep 15, 2022 6:36 AM

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Posted on Sep 15, 2022 6:52 AM

Quit Pages and Safari, don't just close their window.


Launch the Terminal application, and at the prompt, type the following:


defaults read -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled


If it returns numeric 1, then it is correctly enabled, and there probably is another issue¹ why this feature is not working in your specified applications. If it returns numeric 0, then it is disabled, and you can enter the following to re-enable it.


defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled 1



¹ Boot into Safe Boot mode to clear System caches, etc. Open Pages and try the press and hold of a letter. Then reboot normally and retry the press and hold in Pages or a text input field in Safari.

3 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Sep 15, 2022 6:52 AM in response to randomstring--

Quit Pages and Safari, don't just close their window.


Launch the Terminal application, and at the prompt, type the following:


defaults read -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled


If it returns numeric 1, then it is correctly enabled, and there probably is another issue¹ why this feature is not working in your specified applications. If it returns numeric 0, then it is disabled, and you can enter the following to re-enable it.


defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled 1



¹ Boot into Safe Boot mode to clear System caches, etc. Open Pages and try the press and hold of a letter. Then reboot normally and retry the press and hold in Pages or a text input field in Safari.

Cannot type accents by holding in certain apps

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