I wrote recently about my MacBook Pro keyboard issues worsening, and the difficulty in getting it resolved given the time I’d be left without my machine.
(Temporary) Software fix with aahung's Unshaky app. First of all, I got the Macbook Pro 2018 13-inch 2.3 Ghz i5 model, purchased from an Apple Premium Reseller in my home country (no Apple Store unfortunately). Just would like to mention one key issue that has/had affected me since my purchase just over a month ago. Keyboard problem. Unshaky is a 7 letter word, and has the letters ahknsuy (ahknsuy). Starts with u, ends with y, five consonants, two vowels and three syllables. Learn how to use the easiest words finder here. Word lists are in the order of the most common words and most searched. There is a small program, called Unshaky written on Swift. It fixed this issue for me. It lets you configure a timeout for each key to suppress duplicate keypresses. For instance, if the 'e' key is giving you trouble, you can configure the timeout for a longer duration and adjust for the best results. I have many complaints about the terrible keyboard in the last few revs of the MBP, but Unshaky has allowed me to ignore them until it's more convenient to deal with them (and thus put off having to replace my laptop/be without it/spend a bunch of time and money dealing with that). Find 83 ways to say SHAKY, along with antonyms, related words, and example sentences at Thesaurus.com, the world's most trusted free thesaurus.
A reader helpfully pointed me to an interesting software-based solution for a hardware problem – and it has solved 95% of my issues …
Unshaky is a simple Mac utility that monitors keyboard input, and then blocks anything it thinks is a double-press caused by a keyboard fault.
The app works by asking you to register it as an accessibility device. It then registers each keypress and blocks any repeated press within the next 40 milliseconds. The delay is user-configurable, with the developer recommending you stick with the default unless it doesn’t solve the problem, and then try first 60ms and then 80ms.
The app allows you to either set a universal timeout, or to configure them individually for each key.
You can see Unshaky at work. If you tap the menubar icon, it shows you how many keypresses have been dismissed – and you can also open a live debugging window.
Accessibility apps are potentially very dangerous, especially ones which control keyboard usage, as they could easily be used to install a keylogger. However, Unshaky is open-source with the code available for inspection on Github.
Unshaky Github
I’ve been using it for a week now, and it has almost completely solved my issues. I’m no longer seeing any doubt-activations. As both my spacebar and CMD keys were affected, I initially found that it was blocking Spotlight (CMD-Space), but there’s a checkbox for an experimental feature to cure that, and it works for me.
One thing it won’t solve, of course, is keypresses that aren’t being detected – where you get nothing instead of a double character. That happens to me every now and then with the CMD key, but it has completely solved the vast majority of my issues.
I will still have to get the keyboard replaced at some point before the 4-year service program deadline, but Unshaky is a godsend in the meantime.
You can download Unshaky here.
Unshaky For Windows
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