Macbook login bug: keystrokes not registering consistently during password entry

I’m having an issue when entering my password on my laptop. When I log into my account, sometimes keystrokes don’t register. I physically press the key, but the character doesn’t appear. I noticed that this happens most often when I completely erase my password using the Backspace key. After that, while the system is still loading something, I start typing — and the first letter often doesn’t appear.

Sometimes there are other strange issues: the same letter might not register in a specific part of the password. This happens consistently, and changing the password doesn’t help. If the new password starts with the same letter, the issue still occurs. When I change the password to something completely different, it works fine for a few days, but then the problem comes back.

Does anyone have any ideas on what could be causing this?


[Re-Titled by Moderator]

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 15.4

Posted on Mar 3, 2025 10:47 AM

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4 replies

Mar 13, 2025 1:10 PM in response to denys63

This started happening on my machine as well. I thought I was legitimately forgetting my 20+ year-old password until I started to check that each letter was getting registered on entry. I found that the seventh character was always dropped for some reason; but if I entered the keystroke twice, the letter would register. This does not happen anywhere else. Diagnosing this issue is difficult since MacOS does not allow the user to reveal the characters when entering user passwords on the login screen.

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Macbook login bug: keystrokes not registering consistently during password entry

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