How to Use Slow Keys on Mac to Ignore Accidental Presses

If your typing is full of letters you never meant — a brushed key here, a tremor-doubled character there — Slow Keys is the fix built into every Mac. It adds a small delay between a key going down and macOS accepting it, so only presses you hold for a beat count as keystrokes. Brief accidental contact gets filtered out entirely.

Turn on Slow Keys

1. Open System Settings → Accessibility.
2. Click Keyboard under the Motor section.
3. Switch Slow Keys on.

The steps are the same on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia, and the toggle is its own undo — switch it off and the keyboard returns to normal instantly. With it on, expect typing to feel different immediately: taps that don't linger simply don't appear.

Tune the acceptance delay

1. Click the ⓘ button next to the Slow Keys toggle.
2. Drag the Acceptance Delay slider between Short and Long.
3. Test in any text field, adjust, repeat.

This slider is the whole art of Slow Keys. Too short and stray brushes still get through; too long and deliberate typing feels like the keyboard is ignoring you. Start near the short end and lengthen it one notch at a time until the accidental characters stop. The same options sheet has Use click key sounds — a soft tick when a key is accepted. Turn it on while you're calibrating: hearing exactly which presses register makes finding the right delay far faster, and you can switch the sound off once the setting feels natural.

What Slow Keys does and doesn't filter

• Filtered: quick brushes, bounced double-presses from a shaky landing, a palm grazing the corner of the keyboard. If the key comes up before the delay elapses, nothing is typed.
• Not filtered: a key held down past the delay repeats normally afterwards, so holding Delete still clears text. Modifier chords work too — you just hold the whole combination slightly longer.
• Worth knowing: the delay applies to every key, including Return and Esc, in every app. Games and anything timing-sensitive will feel the latency, so some people toggle Slow Keys off for a session and back on afterwards.

If double letters are the real problem

Slow Keys helps when accidental presses are the issue. If your problem is a worn keyboard registering one press as two ("tthe", "thhe"), Slow Keys does help — the bounce usually falls inside the delay — but it's a blunt instrument for that job. Also check the ordinary repeat settings under System Settings → Keyboard: a very short Delay Until Repeat can make held keys spray characters and is easily mistaken for a hardware fault.

Who actually benefits from Slow Keys? Anyone with tremor, limited fine-motor control, or a typing style that rests fingers on the keys — but also more temporary situations: typing with a cast, a toddler on your lap who slaps the keyboard, or an external mechanical board with switches so light your palms trigger them. Because the toggle is a single switch with no side effects, it costs nothing to try for an afternoon. Set the delay, use click sounds while you adjust, and if it isn't for you, one flick of the toggle puts everything back exactly as it was — there's no configuration debris left behind. The delay you chose is remembered, so switching Slow Keys back on later skips the calibration and picks up where you left off.

The other half of the accessibility keyboard pane

Right above Slow Keys sits Sticky Keys, which solves the opposite problem — shortcuts that demand several keys held at once. If brushing keys is hard for you, chording probably is too; the two features are designed to run together.