Make the delete key repeat faster on Mac

Hold Delete to wipe a wrong line and it erases one letter at a time like it's counting them. The Delete key obeys the same repeat rate as every other key on your Mac, so speeding that up fixes it: set KeyRepeat and InitialKeyRepeat (or drag the two Keyboard sliders), log out, and a held Delete tears through text. There are also shortcuts that erase whole words and lines in one press.

Speed up the repeat rate

1. Open System Settings → Keyboard.
2. Drag Key Repeat to Fast — this is the speed a held key fires at.
3. Drag Delay Until Repeat to Short — this is the pause before it starts repeating.
4. Log out and back in so the change applies everywhere.

There's no Delete-only setting; macOS has one repeat rate for the whole keyboard, and Delete rides along with it. If you'd rather set it precisely — or push it faster than the slider allows — do it in Terminal:

# fastest repeat, shortest delay
defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 2
defaults write NSGlobalDomain InitialKeyRepeat -int 15

# undo — restore the macOS defaults
defaults delete NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat
defaults delete NSGlobalDomain InitialKeyRepeat

Both numbers are in units of roughly 15ms, so lower is quicker. The setting is read when apps launch, so log out and back in for it to take hold. This works identically on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia.

Erase more per keystroke

Even at full speed, deleting a paragraph character by character is the slow way. These shortcuts remove chunks at once and don't depend on the repeat rate at all:

• Option + Delete — delete the whole previous word.
• Command + Delete — delete from the cursor back to the start of the line.
• Fn + Delete (or Control + D) — forward delete, erasing the character to the right.

Combine them: Command + Delete to clear a bad line, Option + Delete to back out a word or two. The held-key repeat rate is for fine work; these are for the big cuts. There's more in our guide to deleting words and lines with shortcuts on Mac.

If Delete deletes the wrong direction

On a compact Mac keyboard there's no dedicated forward-delete key, which trips people up when they want to erase ahead of the cursor. Our guide to forward delete on Mac covers the Fn + Delete and Control + D combos and when to use each.