Fix ‘t’ Key Always Pressed on Mac

bugkeyboardmacmacbook pro

For some reason, my Mac keyboard always thinks that the "t" key is always being pressed. However as you can see I can still type in the letter t, but it comes out delayed compared to the other keys. I think it is a software bug as the key still works fine, but on some pages the t key just gets spammed. Oddly enough, shift+t won't give me an uppercase t, but all the other letters work fine (and my caps lock has been converted to a backspace, so I can't test that (by choice)). this has happened before, but typically goes away after a restart, but this one time a restart didn't help.

Edit: Currently on Macbook Air (1 generation ago)

Best Answer

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but most likely your "T" key has a crumb of food or some dust stuck underneath it.

Canned air sometimes works, but sometimes will jam it in there for good.

If it's still under AppleCare, bring it in to an Apple store and look distressed...sometimes it helps to cry a little bit and/or beg. Personally, I just grab a Genius' pant leg and refuse to let go while sobbing loudly.

Generally they can replace the key and/or keyboard, but you may need to go without your laptop for a week.

See Update below...

It seems (only) the input source "French - Numerical" will behave like Window Caps Lock (with iNVERSE sHIFT):

keyboard layout French - Numerical

Found that info here.

But note that this will come with a rather unusual keyboard layout (at least for me).

keyboard layout French - Numerical1

keyboard layout French - Numerical2

Update: Using Ukelele this can be applied to all keyboard layouts:

Thanks Daniel for pointing the right direction.

Open Ukelele and save your (current) layout to a file (e.g. by "New from current input source" and "Save"):

New from current input source

Open the .xml file in a text editor and find the mapIndex that you want to use for the combination ⇧ + ⇪ (shift + caps-lock). For German I used mapIndex="0". Insert this line:

<modifier keys="shift caps"/>

Find all other occurrences of this combination and comment them out (or delete the lines). Again for German it's:

<keyMapSelect mapIndex="1">
<modifier keys="anyShift"/>
<modifier keys="shift rightShift? caps? rightOption? rightControl"/>
<modifier keys="shift rightShift? caps? rightOption rightControl?"/>
<!--<modifier keys="shift rightShift? caps rightOption? rightControl?"/> -->
    </keyMapSelect>

shift caps

Re-open the modified file with Ukelele.

Here is a comparison of the "German" layout before and after the modification:

layout 1

layout 2

Follow the instructions in Ukelele to create a new input source (Name, ID, installation).

I didn't test the modified file, should work though.

Best Answer

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See Update below...

Update: Using Ukelele this can be applied to all keyboard layouts:

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