How to enable the accents in MacOS Ventura?

If you mean that the press and hold popup menu does not appear, you can try this:

open Terminal app and type

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true

and then type return and restart.

Also make sure you do not have Webroot on your machine.

Copy and paste this Terminal command that Tom gave into Terminal followed by the Return or Enter key:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true

Then reboot. in a text editor höld down one of the keys to see if you get this:

Caro4ever wrote:

After installing the latest version of MacOS Ventura, I'm unable to add the accents or special characters on my MacBook Pro.

A few things...

People have reported this problem with every new operating system since the day that pop-up was introduced. It has nothing to do with Ventura.

I don't why webroot was mentioned. But some 3rd party system modification is the most likely explanation. I can't begin to guess which 3rd party system modification it might be. I don't have your computer here in front of me so I have no idea what you have installed or what system configuration changes you have made. Since you are seeing the problem on two different computers, it must be something that you have done to both.

Why are you using that pop-up anyway? What accents do you need? Most major European languages have built-in support for accents. These are:

option e - á

option esc - à

option i - â

option u - ä

option n - ã

and a few others that are single keystroke options like:

option a - å

option c - ç

Want uppercase? No problem.

This is provably faster than using the pop-ups and it isn't going to get randomly disabled like the iOS pop-ups do.

Caro4ever wrote:

It's too bad that the pop up no longer works for me, though.

Indeed there is no reason it should not work for you as it does for others.

Have you made sure that the Key Repeat Rate in system prefs > keyboard > keyboard is not set to "off"?

Have you tried the safe boot I mentioned earlier?

Caro4ever wrote:

I think it's a bug because I have two MacBooks pro and have the same issue on both of them.

But it works fine for me and I haven't seen anyone else reporting your problem so far. So it must be local.

Have you made sure that the Key Repeat Rate in system prefs > keyboard > keyboard is not set to "off"?

Have you tried the safe boot I mentioned earlier?

etresoft wrote: I don't why webroot was mentioned.

It is the most common 3rd party add-on that routinely disables the accent menu (and some other stuff too), for a number of years now

https://community.webroot.com/webroot-consumer-business-for-macs-18/webroot-kills-inflected-character-typing-306690

I had the same problem with Ventura. I fixed it by changing keyboard key repeat rate to mid range speed, and also delay until repeat to mid range also. You can find this in system settings/keyboard/keyboard sensitivity. Hope it works for you too.

Caro4ever wrote:

The letters weren't repeating. I tried the command with false and still they don't repeat.

Also go to your Accessibility preferences and make sure that neither Slow Keys nor Sticky Keys are turned on.

Another thing to try is a safe boot:

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support

Caro4ever wrote:

The letters weren't repeating. I tried the command with false and still they don't repeat.

This is really kind of mysterious. Have look at this page, which might have a couple ideas you have not yet tried:

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/254094/character-accent-menu-doesnt-appear-anymore-in-macos-sierra

I was having the same problem. Thanks to some suggestions from Tom Gewecke and Leroy Douglas, I was able to solve the problem (I hope permanently) by doing the following:

System Settings -> Keyboard Turn on Sticky Keys.

The click on the information icon and make sure everything if OFF.

I'm no tech guru but it is definitely working for me!

Caro4ever wrote:

What I need is to be able to use the accents. This was working before I updated to the new MacOS

Please verify that what you are talking about is the popup menu that appears when you press and hold a key.

Please also tell us what input source you are using. US?

Caro4ever wrote:

Yes, I tried safe mode and the keyboard is not set to off.

If you tried safe mode and have the same problem, then 3rd party system modifications is not the cause.

It may be just a random bug in the operating system. The problem you describe is very common.

I think the biggest issue is simply that so many people come to the Mac from iOS and have no idea that the iOS method is totally foreign to the Mac. It's really a bad idea. It's good if you type 3 or 4 accents a year. Maybe if you write academic papers and sometimes have to type the title of a foreign-language document or author, then it might be useful.

But anyone who regularly writes in a non-English language and uses the pop-up method exclusively has already spent weeks or months out of their lives using this pop-up. You have to press and hold, then select your character. Every time. I'm literally shocked every time I see someone who uses this method on a Mac. Probably the next most common method is some funky direct unicode method, which Apple also broke recently. It's like 3 decades of practice just deleted from history because the iPhone doesn't have an option key. And because the iPhone doesn't have an option key, we can't use it on the Mac. Welcome to the 21st century.

Caro4ever wrote:

Yes, I tried safe mode and the keyboard is not set to off.

And the problem is the same for all the usual apps -- mail, safari, notes, message, pages, textedit?

And press and hold does not cause the letters to repeat either?

If they don't repeat, try the terminal command with false instread of true, and see if they will then at least repeat.

Did you try the Safe Mode boot like Tom suggested?