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using accents on the MacBook Air

I used to be able to press down on a letter key and it would shoe me options for accents. now when I press on a letter key it just types multiple of the same letter eg "aaaaaaa" instead of showing me options for a with different accents. how to I fix this?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Nov 1, 2021 12:18 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 1, 2021 8:32 PM

Hi k_nmm,

Welcome to the Apple Community.


Seems you should be getting the accent menu ok when you hold down the a key.

Just checked, and it works on my MacBook Pro running OS 11.6.


Accent marks aren’t available in all apps, though.


Apple support have this article online (link below)that may help.

Says you can also set up "Dead keys" for use with a particular accent, if you wish


Enter characters with accent marks on Mac

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/mac-help/mh27474/12.0/mac/12.0


Hope, in one way or another, this works for you :-)

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 1, 2021 8:32 PM in response to k_nmm

Hi k_nmm,

Welcome to the Apple Community.


Seems you should be getting the accent menu ok when you hold down the a key.

Just checked, and it works on my MacBook Pro running OS 11.6.


Accent marks aren’t available in all apps, though.


Apple support have this article online (link below)that may help.

Says you can also set up "Dead keys" for use with a particular accent, if you wish


Enter characters with accent marks on Mac

https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/mac-help/mh27474/12.0/mac/12.0


Hope, in one way or another, this works for you :-)

Nov 2, 2021 5:53 AM in response to k_nmm

k_nmm wrote:

I used to be able to press down on a letter key and it would shoe me options for accents. now when I press on a letter key it just types multiple of the same letter eg "aaaaaaa" instead of showing me options for a with different accents. how to I fix this?

This will sometimes fix it:


open Terminal app and type


defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true


and then restart.

using accents on the MacBook Air

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