Hi, this is Gary at MacMost.com. Is something strange going on
with your Mac's keyboard? Here are seven things that you can do that can fix it.
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So often I get questions from people saying that their keyboard is behaving
strangely. Maybe when they type the keys aren't producing the letters that
they expect or there are certain keys that just don't seem to be working at
all. Let's take a look at some reasons why this may happen and how to fix it.
So I find that the most common thing that creates a problem that people can't figure
out is something called Mouse Keys. If, in macOS Ventura, you go to System Settings,
of course System Preferences before Ventura, and then you go to Accessibility
and then go down to Pointer Control. Now you would thing that something that's wrong with
the keyboard would be under Keyboard. But Pointer Control has an option called Mouse Keys. Now what
Mouse Keys does is allows you to use keys on your keyboard that control the pointer on the
screen rather than your Mouse or Trackpad. If you look at this page from Apple here it will show
you exactly what it does. It takes the keys on your keyboard, 7,9,u,o,j,k, and l and uses those
for eight different directions you can move the pointer. If you have a keyboard with an American
keypad it uses the numbers keys instead. So you may have switched this On by accident. In fact,
if you have this option turned on all it takes is pressing the Option key five times to turn
it on. So you may have turned this on at some point, maybe years ago, forgotten about it,
and then maybe hit the Option key five times and now it is turned On and you don't realize
it. So perhaps make sure this is turned Off, but also make sure that you've got this turned Off
if you think you may accidentally trigger Mouse Keys by hitting the Option key too many times.
The next setting to check is to go to Keyboard, which is down here at the bottom of System
Settings. There go to Input Sources. Edit that and take a list of your Input Sources.
You should see just the keyboard that you're using, in this case I'm using a U.S. Keyboard.
But I could easily add other keyboards here. Like, for instance, I'll add a keyboard that's
completely different from the standard keyboard and you could see a representation of it here.
I'll add this one. Then I'll see the keyboards listed here and I can switch between them. But
if you also go to Keyboard, Keyboard Shortcuts, Input Sources here has Keyboard Shortcuts to
switch between those Input Sources. So you can see a quick Control Space would actually go to
the next one. So I could be typing just fine across the top row of the keyboard,
like that with the US Keyboard turned On but a quick Control Space and now you can see I've
switched here and if I type now I get very different keys across the top row. So if you
computer isn't working right make sure that you have the right keyboards included here. Remove any
that you don't need and make sure to check in the Menu Bar to see which one you are currently using.
Now let's go back to Accessibility and this time we are going to go to Keyboard. Here are
a couple of commands that if you don't know they are turned on it may seem the keyboard
is acting very strangely. One is Sticky Keys. With Sticky Keys you don't have to hold the
Shift or Option key down in order for that to be activated. So I can turn this On and
now all I need to do is press the Shift Key and notice at the bottom left corner you can
see an indicator there showing the Shift Key is pressed. Then when I type it is going to
capitalize that first letter there. So I can press Shift and then press q rather than having to hold
Shift and press q. In addition if I double press Shift then it will stay pressed and even though
I'm not holding down the Shift key I'm typing in all Caps here until I press the Shift key again.
Of course if you do want to use Sticky Keys then it is fine and you probably know why your keyboard
is behaving that way. There are some settings here that you can use to adjust it if you like.
There is also something called Slow Keys. If you have that turned On and you look at
the settings here you could see that you need to actually press and hold
a key down in order for it to actually type a character. So if now I just type normally
I get nothing because I'm not holding the key down long enough. That works for all keys in
all situations. Using modifier keys in Keyboard Shortcuts like Command C, Command Q, all of that,
they aren't going to work unless you hold down the keys. So if you keyboard doesn't
seem to be responding but if you press and hold the key it then responds then check Slow Keys.
Next, let's go back to the Keyboard Settings and then take a look at Keyboard Shortcuts.
So you think Keyboard Shortcuts really wouldn't affect anything except the shortcuts themselves.
But there is a section here called Modifier Keys. This allows you to reassign a modifier
key. For instance, Control can be set to Option. Option could be set to Escape.
Command can be set to No Action. I mean you could really wreck havoc here with how your
keyboard works. So perhaps you opened this up and played around with this and left this in
a state that doesn't make sense. So make sure you have things setup with each key
mapping to its default. There's even a handy Restore Defaults button here at the bottom.
Now if none of those have solved your problem then it is probably a more serious issue. But
there maybe a simple fix. There are two things you can reset on your Mac that
could potentially fix keyboard problems. One of them is to Reset NVRAM or it used
to be called PRAM. Here is the Apple page about doing this. Now this is ONLY effective if you've
got an older Intel Mac. There is no NVRAM if you have a newer M1 or M2 Mac. In addition,
there's something called a System Management Controller. This is something you can reset as
well. It also works differently if you've got an Intel Mac and you can use the instructions here
that Apple provides. But if you have a M1 or M2 Mac then all you need to do is a simple restart.
Now if it is just one or two keys don't seem to be working properly it could be
that some dirt has gotten trapped in the keyboard. So you're going to want to clean
it. Now Apple has very specific instructions for cleaning keyboards. You can go to this
page and Apple will tell you how they recommend cleaning a MacBook keyboard. If you have a Magic
Keyboard then you're going to want to go to this page. Apple tells you how they recommend
cleaning that type of keyboard. Of course, if you have a third party keyboard you should
go to that manufacturer's site and see how they recommend cleaning it. It's, of course,
very easy to damage a keyboard and make it even worse if you clean it the wrong way.
Finally, there's the last possibility which is that there is a real serious hardware
issue. There's nothing you can do unless you're a hardware tech to actually fix the keyboard. You're
going to have to take it in to Apple. Before you do there's one test you can perform. If you can
get your hands on another keyboard, any other keyboard, a USB keyboard, a BlueTooth keyboard,
it doesn't have to be an Apple one and connect that to your Mac. Try the same things on both
your Mac keyboard and the second keyboard. See if you get the same result. For instance,
if a certain key isn't working is it also not working on the other keyboard. If so,
you know it is a software issue since you have the problem with both keyboards.
So you're going to want to look for a software solution like maybe you've installed something
that is changing how the keyboard works or assigns different actions to different
keys. Things like that. But if the Mac keyboard has the problem and the other
keyboard that you're testing with doesn't have that problem then it points to the fact there
is a hardware issue and it's time to call Apple Support and get it in so they can take a look.
I hope you found this information useful. Thanks for watching.