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Im using a Mac book air and when I try to type something, random weird symbols appear instead of texts. The symbols "Œ„´‰ˇÁ¨ˆØ∏" appear when I try to type "qwertyuiop".

I had already found a solution although it is only temporary.

I revert my keyboard through following these steps:

  1. Open system preferences
  2. Select accessibility
  3. Select keyboard
  4. Enable sticky keys
  5. turn it off
  6. Problem solved!

However, every time I close my laptop it makes the same error again and I have to fix the accessibility settings each time. Although everything else is working fine I'm still looking for a long-term solution to this problem. I wouldn't want to go through the hassle of logging into the guest account just to change the settings in order to be able to type the password in my main user account on my mac.

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  • 1. Have you checked your language inputs? 2. Have you tried restarting? 3. If that doesn't change anything, does this also happen when booted into safe mode (booting while holding down shift)? 4. If neither of those make any difference, have you tried re-installing macOS from your recovery partition? You can boot into the recovery by holding down Command and R while starting up. If none of these make a difference, I think that it's probably a hardware issue. Would it be possible for you to post some of the characters that show up instead of text?
    – Sam
    Commented May 9, 2019 at 5:59
  • can you please check if this problem persist when you are booted into Recovery mode?
    – Sam
    Commented May 9, 2019 at 6:12
  • Tried all these but they didn't work. Only solution which works for me is enabling and disabling the sticky keys. The symbols "Œ„´‰ˇÁ¨ˆØ∏" appear when I try to type "qwertyuiop". I have also just noticed right now that my left shift key is not working.
    – user1171225346
    Commented May 9, 2019 at 7:22
  • Try an external keyboard and see if that works ok.
    – Tom Gewecke
    Commented May 9, 2019 at 12:17
  • I believe that your computer believes that the option key is stuck down. Please try re-installing macOS from an installer (which can be made with this tool: dosdude1.com/apps/Mac%20OS%20X%20USB%20Drive%20Creator.zip), as that could possibly fix this issue if it's a driver problem.
    – Sam
    Commented May 9, 2019 at 15:23

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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Your qwertyuiop result indicates that your machine thinks that both option and shift are being held down while you type. The symbols are not random but exactly what is supposed to happen when those keys are depressed. Normally this would indicate a damaged keyboard, especially if you try another one and it works ok.

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1
  • It means only that developers of keyboards messed up with settings. After reset and turn bluetooth needs to be pressed [option] [caps lock]. Also could be solved by reset mac memory (NVRam or... )
    – user44126
    Commented Sep 11, 2022 at 20:24
5

I just ran into this issue myself. Was able to get out of it by hitting [option] [caps lock].

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3
  • Nice answer. This worked for me as well. Definitely more convenient than the restart I recommend in my own answer.
    – Jon Thoms
    Commented Oct 12, 2020 at 0:08
  • This should be accepted answer.
    – Giau Huynh
    Commented Apr 1 at 13:56
  • Worked for me, thanks
    – Alireza Alallah
    Commented Nov 7 at 9:12
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This issue has happened to me a couple of times, and I found this question while googling, and the answer that worked for me was on the Mac forums. What worked for me was restarting and while the Apple image appears alone on the screen, press and hold the following command sequence until the login prompt again reappears.

Command + Option + P + R

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1

I had similar issues. My keyboard type symbols like on a picture. I check everything, keyboard settings, sticky key setting, EFi, recovery, I reinstall everything and everywhere appears those symbols when I try to type something .. but I didn’t check ‘right OPTION’ key. Was stuck inside of the keyboard. This pushed in and stuck Key OPTION+any_key give me back those symbols which drive me crazy. How to remove key you can find on YT https://youtu.be/N4rI4-q4uYQ after cleaning everything goes normal. enter image description here

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