Intellij-idea: auto-repetition of letter keys

Question

Using Intellij-Idea 12 on OS X, I have a strange problem: when I keep a letter ([a-z]) key pressed in the editor, the key stroke does not repeat. This is unfortunately a problem

Answer 1

I had the same issue on macos 10.12.6 using PyCharm Pro 2017.3, one of JetBrains products. Using danslee and Dao answers, I came up with (replace PyCharm by the name of the application you are using):

1. Quit the JetBrains application,
2. Find the name of the parameter that controls the key repetition by editing the file /Applications/PyCharm.app/Contents/Info.plist and looking for the value of the key CFBundleIdentifier. This is the parameter I found: com.jetbrains.pycharm, it might be different for you,
3. Set the parameter found to the desired value: $ defaults write com.jetbrains.pycharm ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true. true will set auto-repeat, false will set no auto-repeat,
4. You can check the value of the parameter by doing this: $ defaults read > defaults_read.txt and look for 'ApplePressAndHoldEnabled' in defaults_read.txt,
5. Run the application and check.

Answer 2

You can change also be more specific and change the behavior for only IntelliJ with the following command. The -g option in the above solution changes it for all applications.

defaults write com.jetbrains.intellij ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

For the 14.x community edition, you may need to use a different URI:

defaults write com.jetbrains.intellij.ce ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

This works for MacOSX 10.10 Yosemite and IntelliJ 13.1.6

Answer 3

It's a system preference not specific to Intellij IDEA:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false