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Is there a solution for OS X 10.6? I don't find it in the system preferences.

Andrei
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3 Answers3

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You can try using Ukelele to create your own keyboard layout, without the dead key behaviour.

Daniel Beck
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  • +1. AFAIK, the dead key behaviour can only be changed through the use of a utility like Ukelele to edit the keyboard input methods. – ghoppe Sep 22 '10 at 21:17
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For folks using the US layout, I used Ukelele to create a version without dead keys. You could use that instead of having to make your own.

To set it up you'd need to:

  1. Download a zip of my dotfiles and unzip it.
  2. Move the keyboards/US No Dead Keys/US No Dead Keys.bundle folder into your ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts folder.
  3. Delete the rest of the dotfiles folder.
  4. Reboot so that OSX recognizes the new layout.
  5. Open System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources and add U.S. No Dead Keys. It will be at the top of the list rather than sorted alphabetically.
  6. Activate it from the input sources icon in the menu bar.

If you're using a different layout, my version might still be a useful reference, since I found working with Ukelele to be difficult. If you compare U.S. No Dead Keys.keylayout to the system .keylayout, you can see what changes I had to make, and then make those to your own .keylayout file. More info is available in Disable key in macos without a third party program.

Ian Dunn
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The three characters you mention '~', '^', and '`' are all on my (UK Apple) keyboard - '~' and '`' are on the key to the immediate right of the left shift key (I believe this is above the tab key on US Apple keyboards) and '^' is shift-6. Try turning on the "Keyboard & Character Viewer" in the input sources tab of the language and text section of System Preferences. Then select "Show Keyboard Viewer" from the menulet that appears in the top right of the screen - press the modifier keys and you'll be able to see what buttons do what.

Nontheless, to get other diacritical marks and whatnot on their own, you can press a key that can't have that accent on it. For instance, to produce '\´', you can press option-e and then escape or any letter key that can't take the accent (for instance, w).

Vinayak
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Scott
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    The problem is that if I type ~^` then I have to press something like space to fix the character, otherwise the following character will be corrected (e.g. ã), or not be displayed. This is very annoying and I hope to get rid of it since I don't use those fancy letters. – Andrei Sep 22 '10 at 10:00
  • Can you not just use the plain keys, then? They don't require anything to be pressed after them. What input method are you using? (in the input sources tab of the language & text section of System Preferences) – Scott Sep 22 '10 at 10:35
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    I use `Swedish-Pro` input method, but I notice the same problem for `U.S. International-PC`. There are no plain keys for this characters, I have to press Shift-smth, or Opt-smth to get them. And I want to avoid the unnecessary pressing of extra keys every time I need to type those characters. – Andrei Sep 22 '10 at 10:57
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    I see your problem. Using the Swedish - Pro layout, I can find single keys for everything but the tilde ('~'), though - have a poke about in the Keyboard Viewer, holding down combinations of option and shift. As for the tilde, the only thing I can suggest is re-mapping a key or switching to another keyboard layout, though the latter risks stymying your Swedish typing. – Scott Sep 22 '10 at 13:35