My Mid 2012 (Non Retina) Macbook Pro has recently developed a strange issue with a row of keys - specifically the ‘A’ to ‘L’ keys (9 keys in total). It’s got to the point where it’s now too frustrating to type without the assistance of the keyboard viewer.
If I press any of these keys there’s often a 2 to 3 second delay before the character shows on screen and I have to keep the key depressed for the time before the character will show! Obviously this greatly slows down typing and having to use the keyboard viewer doesn’t make things much faster! I’ve also noticed occasionally when keeping one of the affected keys depressed for the 2-3 seconds results in 4 or 5 of the character appearing like a key repeat is on. Only occasionally, I’d say maybe 10% of the time, do these keys behave normally, but also on occasion I find I have to keep the keys depressed for as long as 5 seconds before a character appears! Though this is usually only after waking the laptop from sleep.
I don’t think it’s a heat issue as it’s not like I begin to have problems with these keys only after I’ve been using the laptop for hours at a time. So whether the laptop has been left on for a while or whether it’s been in sleep mode for a while ( I rarely turn it off) doesn’t seem have much bearing.
I’ve looked at the keyboard settings and options in ‘System Preferences’, but the settings haven’t been changed. Besides the settings are ‘global’ i.e. the settings ‘Key Repeat’ (Off - Slow - Fast), ‘Delay Until Repeat’ (Long - Short) and ‘Enable Slow Keys’ (Delay: Short - Long) will affect all character generating keys equally. Maybe there’s a way to adjust these settings to a row of keys - perhaps through the ‘Terminal’? Then I could perhaps apply a negative amount of delay to the affected keys to bring the keys response time back to normal?
I’ve read a lot of posts on the internet about Macbook/Pro/Air owners having a particular key or group of keys stop working altogether or only work intermittently, but that’s not the case with my Macbook Pro’s keyboard since the affected keys do still work all the time - that is they still generate their respective character when pressed, it’s just that they have to be depressed (held down) for several seconds before a character appears so there’s a lengthly delay being caused or applied. Whether a fault has developed in the keyboard matrix or with the keyboard scan I don’t know? I’ve read replies suggesting a swelling battery could be responsible by pressing on the keyboard. Could that be a possibility here given the behaviour I’m describing?