Stop the press-and-hold menu interrupting typing

Press-and-hold is the macOS feature that waits when you hold a key and offers a menu of variants instead of repeating the character. For some people it's invisible; for others it makes typing feel laggy and unpredictable — a held key does nothing, then a menu appears. If it's fighting you rather than helping, one preference turns the whole mechanic off.

What press-and-hold actually does

Hold a key on a Mac and, for a beat, nothing happens — macOS is deciding whether you want a repeated character or the accent menu. On a keyboard with accent-eligible letters it shows the popup; the delay before repeat kicks in is that decision window. If you type in bursts, or lean on keys briefly, that pause and the menu both read as the system ignoring you. The behavior is governed by a single preference, ApplePressAndHoldEnabled, and macOS gives you no interface switch for it — so it's a Terminal change.

Turn it off

Open Terminal (Applications → Utilities) and run:

# Stop the press-and-hold menu; hold-to-repeat instead
defaults write NSGlobalDomain ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

# Undo — restore press-and-hold behavior
defaults write NSGlobalDomain ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true

Because apps read this at launch, the change takes full effect after you log out and back in or restart; to try it in one app immediately, quit and reopen just that app. From then on, holding a key repeats it — no waiting, no menu. This works identically across macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia.

The trade-off, stated plainly

Turning press-and-hold off has exactly one cost: you lose the hold-a-key shortcut for accented characters. Everything else about typing is untouched. In return you get consistent, immediate key repeat and no popup interrupting a fast run of text. Whether that's a good deal comes down to how often you type accents:

• Rarely or never — turn it off and don't look back; you can still insert the odd accent from the Emoji & Symbols viewer (Control+Cmd+Space) or with Option combos.
• Often, in another language — you may prefer to leave it on, or switch to a keyboard layout built for that language, which is faster than the popup anyway.

Since the change is a one-line reversal, it's cheap to try for a day and undo if you miss the menu.

Repeat back, but still feels off?

If keys now repeat but too slowly, or you have to hold too long before they start, that's a different pair of settings — Key Repeat rate and Delay Until Repeat, both under System Settings → Keyboard. Press-and-hold decides whether a key repeats; those two decide how fast and after how long. Tune all three together and typing stops feeling like it's second-guessing you.

Dial in the repeat that comes back

With press-and-hold off, key repeat is yours to tune. See how to speed up key repeat on Mac to set the rate and delay past what the sliders alone allow.