Okay here’s another annoying iOS feature that Mac OS X Lion has adopted. I actually hate this one, but it isn’t the one I hate the most I’ll talk about that next week. It’s smart if you need it, but stupid if you aren’t spending all day using different special characters. If you are a developer you might not like that fact that you cannot enter multiple letter A’s etc. The title of this post is an example of a creative way to use repeating characters that Mac OS X Lion won’t allow you to do by default.
Today, I’ll show you how to fix that.
Launch the Terminal app located inside of the Utilities folder which is inside of the Applications folder on your startup disk. Once you have the prompt enter:
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false
and press Enter/Return. This will allow your keys to repeat like they did before Mac OS X Lions release. If you decide to switch it back to the new repeat key method enter the following at the Terminal prompt:
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true
Please note that the change will not take effect for apps that are already open and running. You’ll have to close and re-open any apps before the change you make above so that the app recognizes the change.