Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Second Edition

Keyboard

The Keyboard panel lets you do some frivolous keyboard fine-tuning. It also unlocks Mac OS X’s strange and remarkable Full Keyboard Access feature, which lets you control your Mac’s menus, windows, dialog boxes, buttons, the Dock, and the toolbar—all from the keyboard.

Repeat Rate Tab

You’re probably too young to remember the antique once known as the typewriter. On some electric versions of this machine, you could hold down the letter X key to type a series of XXXXXXXs—ideal for crossing something out in a contract, for example.

On the Mac, every key behaves this way. Hold down any key long enough, and it starts spitting out repetitions, making it easy to type, for example, “No WAAAAAAAY!” or “You go, girrrrrrrrrl!” The two sliders in the Repeat Rate pane of the Keyboard panel govern this behavior. On the right: a slider that determines how long you must hold down the key before it starts repeating (to prevent triggering repetitions accidentally, in other words). On the left: a slider that governs how fast each key spits out letters once the spitting has begun.

Full Keyboard Access Tab

For a full discussion of the options on this pane, see Section 4.4.