MacOS Accent Menu Has Disappeared
If the Accent Menu used to type accented characters via pressing and holding a letter key suddenly no longer appears, here are some ways to possibly bring it back:
+Go to System Preferences/Settings > Keyboard and make sure that Key Repeat is NOT set to Off and that Delay Until Repeat is not set too long. Try setting Key Repeat to OFF and then back to wherever it was before.
+Check that you are not using the input source called Unicode Hex (U+). It does not have accent menus in some versions of MacOS.
+Make sure you do not have Webroot antivirus installed on your machine.
+Open the Terminal App in Applications/Utilities and type:
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true
and then press return and restart.
(Note that some users have reported needing to repeat this a few times)
For webroot that you can’t remove, try
- Click the Webroot SecureAnywhere icon in the menu bar.
- Choose Pause Secure Keyboard Entry.
If none of these help, check for apps actively requiring password input, as described here.
If you need an alternative immediately, you can use option key shortcuts, a list of which is here.
Note: The Accent Menu feature was added in OS X 10.7 Lion in 2011 and has been the default behavior for MacOS ever since. Some users dislike it and prefer to be able to use long press to repeat letter keys. To restore the ability to repeat letter keys this way, you can use the terminal command mentioned above, changing the "true" to "false".
Even with the Accent Menu active, various symbol keys should still repeat on long press, such as !@#$%^&*()_+{}|:"<>?-=[];'.,/