7 Ways To Fix a Mac Keyboard That Is Not Working Correctly

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.