macOS: How to Turn Off Sticky Keys

I was working on my MacBook and noticed that every time I pressed the Shift, Command, or Option keys, a sound would play, and the image of the key would appear at the upper-right portion of the screen. I had no idea how I enabled this, but it was annoying, and I had to learn how to disable it.

It turns out this behavior is a macOS feature called “Sticky Keys”. You can disable Sticky Keys with these steps:

  1. Select the Apple menu then choose System Preferences… > Accessibility > Keyboard.
    Note: On older versions of macOS, the “Accessibility” option is named “Universal Access”.
  2. Under Hardware, uncheck the Enable Sticky Keys box.
  3. The Options… menu has a few options you may want to be aware of. From there you can turn the following options on or off:
  • Press the Shift key five times to toggle Sticky Keys
  • Beep when a modifier key is set
  • Display pressed keys on screen

macOS Stick Keys Settings

Once this box is unchecked, a “Sticky Keys off” message appeared on the screen and the feature was disabled.

Ahh! Now the annoying sound and images of keys were gone from my MacBook.

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