murrayE

Q: How get holding down letter pop up accents menu in El Capitan?

In OS X Yosemite, I could hold down a letter such as e and get a pop-up menu of accented versions. (In various apps and even in Finder when naming a file.)

 

This is no longer working in El Capitan (10.11.1).

 

How fix?

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), 3.4GHz Corei7, 16GB, SSD + 2T HD

Posted on Oct 26, 2015 5:42 PM

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Q: How get holding down letter pop up accents menu in El Capitan?

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  • by leroydouglas,

    leroydouglas leroydouglas Oct 26, 2015 5:51 PM in response to murrayE
    Level 7 (23,789 points)
    Notebooks
    Oct 26, 2015 5:51 PM in response to murrayE

    é

     

    OS X El Capitan: Enter characters with accent marks

     

    works for me

     

    MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2012), OS X El Capitan(10.11.1), i7 480GB SSD 16GB RAM iPhone5 iOS9.1, Parallels10.0.2

  • by Barney-15E,

    Barney-15E Barney-15E Oct 26, 2015 5:56 PM in response to murrayE
    Level 9 (50,365 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 26, 2015 5:56 PM in response to murrayE

    Some had problems with Yosemite or Mavericks and resolved it by adding another Latin language to the list of keyboard layouts in Keyboard System Prefs.

    I'm not sure if you have to leave it there, but you don't have to use it. I think just putting it in there tripped some bit somewhere and made it work again.

    Doesn't hurt to try.

  • by murrayE,

    murrayE murrayE Oct 26, 2015 7:32 PM in response to Barney-15E
    Level 1 (47 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 26, 2015 7:32 PM in response to Barney-15E

    Alas, adding another Latin language (I tried British) to keyboard layouts in Keyboard system preferences did not fix the problem.

  • by murrayE,

    murrayE murrayE Oct 26, 2015 7:33 PM in response to leroydouglas
    Level 1 (47 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 26, 2015 7:33 PM in response to leroydouglas

    Yes, I know it's working for some folks, but something's changed so that holding down the letter key to see the pop-up menu of accents is NOT working for me since update to El Capitan.

  • by murrayE,

    murrayE murrayE Oct 26, 2015 7:44 PM in response to murrayE
    Level 1 (47 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 26, 2015 7:44 PM in response to murrayE

    I should add that when I do hold down, say the a key or the e key, everything freezes: I cannot delete that letter or save the file.

     

     

    In some apps where the pop-up used to appear under Yosemite, now holding down the letter key just causes multiple copies of the letter to be entered. (Is that a clue?)

  • by leroydouglas,

    leroydouglas leroydouglas Oct 26, 2015 7:58 PM in response to murrayE
    Level 7 (23,789 points)
    Notebooks
    Oct 26, 2015 7:58 PM in response to murrayE

    murrayE wrote:

     

    I should add that when I do hold down, say the a key or the e key, everything freezes: I cannot delete that letter or save the file.

     

     

    In some apps where the pop-up used to appear under Yosemite, now holding down the letter key just causes multiple copies of the letter to be entered. (Is that a clue?)

    Yes that is a key. 

     

    the default behavior of the accent menu, use Terminal to enter the following command, press Return, and then log out and back in:

    defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true

     

    in El Cap you may have to disable SIP  About System Integrity Protection on your Mac - Apple Support

  • by Barney-15E,

    Barney-15E Barney-15E Oct 26, 2015 8:03 PM in response to murrayE
    Level 9 (50,365 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 26, 2015 8:03 PM in response to murrayE

    murrayE wrote:

     

    Alas, adding another Latin language (I tried British) to keyboard layouts in Keyboard system preferences did not fix the problem.

    English isn't a Latin (a.k.a. Romance) language. Try French, Spanish, Italian...

  • by murrayE,

    murrayE murrayE Oct 27, 2015 7:48 AM in response to Barney-15E
    Level 1 (47 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 27, 2015 7:48 AM in response to Barney-15E

    Barney-15E wrote:

    murrayE wrote:

     

    Alas, adding another Latin language (I tried British) to keyboard layouts in Keyboard system preferences did not fix the problem.

    English isn't a Latin (a.k.a. Romance) language. Try French, Spanish, Italian...

    OK, added Italian. No change -- the hold-down-key to get pop-up accents menu is still not working.

  • by murrayE,Solvedanswer

    murrayE murrayE Oct 27, 2015 8:26 AM in response to leroydouglas
    Level 1 (47 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 27, 2015 8:26 AM in response to leroydouglas

    leroydouglas wrote:

     

    murrayE wrote:

     

    I should add that when I do hold down, say the a key or the e key, everything freezes: I cannot delete that letter or save the file.

     

     

    In some apps where the pop-up used to appear under Yosemite, now holding down the letter key just causes multiple copies of the letter to be entered. (Is that a clue?)

    Yes that is a key.

     

    the default behavior of the accent menu, use Terminal to enter the following command, press Return, and then log out and back in:

    defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true

     

    in El Cap you may have to disable SIP  About System Integrity Protection on your Mac - Apple Support

    That worked! And without having to temporarily disable SIP. It did require logout and log back in to take effect.

     

    Many thanks!

     

    (The mystery remains as to how ApplePressAndHoldEnabled became disabled. It was enabled in Yosemite, and the Apple docs for El Capitan seem to suggest that this is the default behavior.)

  • by leroydouglas,

    leroydouglas leroydouglas Oct 27, 2015 8:51 AM in response to murrayE
    Level 7 (23,789 points)
    Notebooks
    Oct 27, 2015 8:51 AM in response to murrayE

    murrayE wrote:

    That worked! And without having to temporarily disable SIP. It did require logout and log back in to take effect.

     

    Many thanks!

     

    (The mystery remains as to how ApplePressAndHoldEnabled became disabled. It was enabled in Yosemite, and the Apple docs for El Capitan seem to suggest that this is the default behavior.)

     

    Good computing murrayE !


    Well yes, maybe a mystery however it is not a perfect science;  after all it is just a bunch of ones and zeros.

     

     

    MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2012), OS X El Capitan(10.11.1), i7 480GB SSD 16GB RAM iPhone5 iOS9.1, Parallels10.0.2

  • by Pat588,

    Pat588 Pat588 Nov 12, 2015 7:32 AM in response to leroydouglas
    Level 1 (4 points)
    iPhone
    Nov 12, 2015 7:32 AM in response to leroydouglas

    Thank you! My first time using Terminal and it worked perfectly, no need to disable SIP...

  • by net-buoy,

    net-buoy net-buoy Feb 6, 2016 1:44 PM in response to murrayE
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 6, 2016 1:44 PM in response to murrayE

    As suggested,  changing default does not appear to work on ElCap without SIP disabling, and one would argue that disabling SIP to obtain this feature is totally inappropriate. Why does Apple continue to break every feature it introduces, lol.....

     

    What is not clear from the discussion above is whether once SIP is disabled, whether the solution then requires the default change, and then turning SIP back on ;-)

     

    so -the follow on question is that since the csrutil must be used from recovery mode, can the change in default then be implemented via discovery mode, and will it then stick once the system is changed to csrutil and rebooted?

     

    and,  why isn;t there a much much much simpler way to access this wonderful feature?

  • by llorathe,

    llorathe llorathe Feb 10, 2016 2:48 AM in response to murrayE
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 10, 2016 2:48 AM in response to murrayE

    This worked but I had to check how to find Teminal - it is in applications, then utilities - and I copied and pasted the command once I worked this out and it worked.

  • by Luis Sequeira1,

    Luis Sequeira1 Luis Sequeira1 Feb 10, 2016 3:44 AM in response to llorathe
    Level 6 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Feb 10, 2016 3:44 AM in response to llorathe

    llorathe wrote:

     

    This worked but I had to check how to find Teminal - it is in applications, then utilities - and I copied and pasted the command once I worked this out and it worked.

     

    There is a much easier way, which works for any application. Use Spotlight.

    Command-Space and start typing the name of the application; when you see it filled in, press enter.

    This is usually the fastest method - even fastest than clicking in the Dock!

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