How To Take The iOS Out Of Lion: Turn Off Autocorrect, Turn On Key Autorepeat

John Brownlee (12:24 pm PDT, Jul 26 2011)

OS X Lion is the best version of OS X yet, but some of its design choices aren’t without controversy… especially the decision to make the whole operating system more like iOS.

Hate that stuff? Over the next few days, we’ll be posting some tips on taking the iOS inspirations back out of your Mac. Today, we’re going to focus on how to stop your Mac from handling your text input as if you were typing it out on your iPhone.

The two big changes that Apple made in OS X Lion to the default way that text input is handled is institute iOS-like autocorrect as well as turn off the ability to repeat a key just by holding it down.

Luckily, both are easy enough to fix.

To Turn Off iOS-Like AutoCorrect In OS X Lion

1. Open Applications > System Preferences > Language & Text.

2. Untick the box that says “Correct spelling automatically.”

Voila! OS X Lion will no longer presume it knows how to spell better than you… even though it probably can.

To Turn On Key Autoepeat

1. Open Applications > Utilities > Terminal.

2. Paste this into the Terminal.app window then hit Enter.

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

Now you can hold down the ‘s’ key and make it hiss!

DON'T MISS
Turn Off iOS Like Autocorrection While Typing in Lion [OS X Tips]

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63 comments »

http://www.facebook.com/michaelblack1977 Michael Black
I actually haven’t noticed the auto correct feature in Lion yet. I’ll keep it as it is if/until I find it annoying. Although the whole “natural scrolling” thing I find to be way too annoying.

Anonymous
Am I wrong or was that in Snow Leopard already? Snow Leopard was correcting stuff I wrote wrong too sometimes.
Anonymous
Am I wrong or was that in Snow Leopard already? Snow Leopard was correcting stuff I wrote wrong too sometimes.
Anonymous
Am I wrong or was that in Snow Leopard already? Snow Leopard was correcting stuff I wrote wrong too sometimes.
Anonymous
Am I wrong or was that in Snow Leopard already? Snow Leopard was correcting stuff I wrote wrong too sometimes.

http://twitter.com/simonothen simon othen
wouldn’t that be “stuff i had written incorrectly” :)))

Anonymous
Am I wrong or was that in Snow Leopard already? Snow Leopard was correcting stuff I wrote wrong too sometimes.
Anonymous
Am I wrong or was that in Snow Leopard already? Snow Leopard was correcting stuff I wrote wrong too sometimes.
Anonymous
Am I wrong or was that in Snow Leopard already? Snow Leopard was correcting stuff I wrote wrong too sometimes.
Anonymous
Am I wrong or was that in Snow Leopard already? Snow Leopard was correcting stuff I wrote wrong too sometimes.
Anonymous
Am I wrong or was that in Snow Leopard already? Snow Leopard was correcting stuff I wrote wrong too sometimes.
Anonymous
Am I wrong or was that in Snow Leopard already? Snow Leopard was correcting stuff I wrote wrong too sometimes.
Anonymous
Am I wrong or was that in Snow Leopard already? Snow Leopard was correcting stuff I wrote wrong too sometimes.
Anonymous
Am I wrong or was that in Snow Leopard already? Snow Leopard was correcting stuff I wrote wrong too sometimes.
Anonymous
Am I wrong or was that in Snow Leopard already? Snow Leopard was correcting stuff I wrote wrong too sometimes.

Anonymous
I noticed the key auto repeat thing on my first day with lion. Damn that is annoying! Whats the point anyway? It does not help at all, its just throwing rocks in my way.
Anonymous
I noticed the key auto repeat thing on my first day with lion. Damn that is annoying! Whats the point anyway? It does not help at all, its just throwing rocks in my way.
Anonymous
I noticed the key auto repeat thing on my first day with lion. Damn that is annoying! Whats the point anyway? It does not help at all, its just throwing rocks in my way.
Anonymous
I noticed the key auto repeat thing on my first day with lion. Damn that is annoying! Whats the point anyway? It does not help at all, its just throwing rocks in my way.
Anonymous
I noticed the key auto repeat thing on my first day with lion. Damn that is annoying! Whats the point anyway? It does not help at all, its just throwing rocks in my way.
Anonymous
I noticed the key auto repeat thing on my first day with lion. Damn that is annoying! Whats the point anyway? It does not help at all, its just throwing rocks in my way.
Anonymous
I noticed the key auto repeat thing on my first day with lion. Damn that is annoying! Whats the point anyway? It does not help at all, its just throwing rocks in my way.
Anonymous
I noticed the key auto repeat thing on my first day with lion. Damn that is annoying! Whats the point anyway? It does not help at all, its just throwing rocks in my way.
Anonymous
I noticed the key auto repeat thing on my first day with lion. Damn that is annoying! Whats the point anyway? It does not help at all, its just throwing rocks in my way.
Anonymous
I noticed the key auto repeat thing on my first day with lion. Damn that is annoying! Whats the point anyway? It does not help at all, its just throwing rocks in my way.
Anonymous
I noticed the key auto repeat thing on my first day with lion. Damn that is annoying! Whats the point anyway? It does not help at all, its just throwing rocks in my way.
Anonymous
I noticed the key auto repeat thing on my first day with lion. Damn that is annoying! Whats the point anyway? It does not help at all, its just throwing rocks in my way.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=734729751 John Branham
and the instructions didn’t fix it for me either.

http://wilker-dev.com Wilker Lúcio
remember that you need to re-open the apps to make the key repeat work on them again ;)
worked perrrrrrrrrrfect here :P

Anonymous
I noticed the key auto repeat thing on my first day with lion. Damn that is annoying! Whats the point anyway? It does not help at all, its just throwing rocks in my way.
Anonymous
I noticed the key auto repeat thing on my first day with lion. Damn that is annoying! Whats the point anyway? It does not help at all, its just throwing rocks in my way.
http://twitter.com/BarelyTweet Brandon M
I like it.
http://twitter.com/BarelyTweet Brandon M
I like it.
http://twitter.com/BarelyTweet Brandon M
I like it.
http://twitter.com/BarelyTweet Brandon M
I like it.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=767143139 David Penick
Unchecking the “correct spelling automatically” box doesn’t work for me, at least in Safari. So I disabled spellcheck in Safari. Hopefully that will work.
Daibidh
The more I use Lion the more I enjoy the greater UI continuity between my desktop and my phone. Sure, it takes a little getting used to but thats what change is all about… and as we go increasingly mobile, the younger generations not brainwashed in the old paradigms will demand even more change of us old dogs. So I don’t think it is as frivolous as some suggest… it’s just the beginning. I freaking LOVE the new way of inserting accents while I type. I always wondered who frakked up with that “insert special character” or “change keyboard layouts” mess. Seriously?! Not even Redmond made it THAT complicated! And Auto-repeat? What exactly is that? Holding down a key and have it repeat? People use that?!
http://www.facebook.com/julantvel Julian Velasquez
I actually enjoy the autocorrect, and didn’t know about the non-repeating letters because I don’t often feel the need to repeat letters unnecessarily. ;]
Anonymous
Thank you! Thissss is awesome!
Anonymous
“Autoepeat?” Really?

Anonymous
Should have left autocorrect set to “on” ;-)

Mind WarrioR
lol…
Mind WarrioR
lol…
Mind WarrioR
lol…

freediverx
Coming soon, how to mimic Windows 7 UI conventions and enable floppy disk support.
Saulius Dumbliauskas
Mac OS X Lion is stuffed with 250 new features which we will need to find and turn them off. It really sux.
Saulius Dumbliauskas
Mac OS X Lion is stuffed with 250 new features which we will need to find and turn them off. It really sux.
http://www.facebook.com/fleea Felicia DeGroot
if you get rid of the auto repeat, how can you get it back?

http://www.youtube.com/matthewmspace matthewmspaceyoutube
Type in defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true

Gregg Girling
Funnily (actually, unfunnily) enough, the disabling of auto correct described above doesn’t work for me. I’ve de-selected the box “Correct spelling automatically” yet my computer insists on using US spellings (e.g. when I type “organisation” it immediately changes it to “organisation”). That’s also despite the fact that the pull down menu below the “Correct spelling automatically” box, I’ve selected “British English” and have removed the US dictionary options.
Supremely annoying (although, otherwise I’m loving Lion)

http://twitter.com/NathanHornby Nathan Hornby
Um, that’s because the British spelling is Organisation; US english is Organization.
Maybe you do need autocorrect…

mai duc chung
The usual idea is that you would use NFC to set up the link between the two devices and then do an automatic hand over to a different protocol for doing the actual transfer of data – eg Bluetooth,iphone 5
mai duc chung
The usual idea is that you would use NFC to set up the link between the two devices and then do an automatic hand over to a different protocol for doing the actual transfer of data – eg Bluetooth,iphone 5
mai duc chung
The usual idea is that you would use NFC to set up the link between the two devices and then do an automatic hand over to a different protocol for doing the actual transfer of data – eg Bluetooth,iphone 5
mai duc chung
The usual idea is that you would use NFC to set up the link between the two devices and then do an automatic hand over to a different protocol for doing the actual transfer of data – eg Bluetooth,iphone 5
mai duc chung
The usual idea is that you would use NFC to set up the link between the two devices and then do an automatic hand over to a different protocol for doing the actual transfer of data – eg Bluetooth,iphone 5
mai duc chung
The usual idea is that you would use NFC to set up the link between the two devices and then do an automatic hand over to a different protocol for doing the actual transfer of data – eg Bluetooth,iphone 5
mai duc chung
The usual idea is that you would use NFC to set up the link between the two devices and then do an automatic hand over to a different protocol for doing the actual transfer of data – eg Bluetooth,iphone 5
mai duc chung
The usual idea is that you would use NFC to set up the link between the two devices and then do an automatic hand over to a different protocol for doing the actual transfer of data – eg Bluetooth,iphone 5
mai duc chung
The usual idea is that you would use NFC to set up the link between the two devices and then do an automatic hand over to a different protocol for doing the actual transfer of data – eg Bluetooth,iphone 5
mai duc chung
The usual idea is that you would use NFC to set up the link between the two devices and then do an automatic hand over to a different protocol for doing the actual transfer of data – eg Bluetooth,iphone 5
mai duc chung
The usual idea is that you would use NFC to set up the link between the two devices and then do an automatic hand over to a different protocol for doing the actual transfer of data – eg Bluetooth,iphone 5
http://bradbell.tv/blog/ BradBell
I had to deactivate spell check in Safari separately.
This change also seemed to affect TextEdit, which also has it’s own settings. Either that, or there is a time lag before the settings take. I’ve tested to figure out how it works, but the complexity of the results suggests it’s just very buggy.
In any case, changing the settings in Safari fixed everything instantly:
Edit > Spelling and Grammar – untick (ONLY) “Correct spelling automatically”

About the author

John Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in How-To | Tagged: autocorrect, autorepeat, How-To, iOS, lion, OS X Lion |