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Sciuriware

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 4, 2014
758
165
Gelderland
Hi all,
I wonder if Catalina has an option to add an audible key click.
It could help to avoid near-missers on the keystrokes when typing blind.
Thanks.
;JOOP!
 

cmaier

Suspended
Jul 25, 2007
25,405
33,474
California
Hi all,
I wonder if Catalina has an option to add an audible key click.
It could help to avoid near-missers on the keystrokes when typing blind.
Thanks.
;JOOP!
No built-in way to do that, since the point of audible key click on other devices is to compensate for lack of a physical keyboard (which makes its own clicks, naturally)
 

pr3jker

macrumors newbie
Jul 18, 2020
10
2
Keyclick delivers a "Failure creating Keyclick server" error in Console, and I get no click (key or trackpad), no matter all the troubleshooting help from developper's website.
MacBook 10.15.6
 

tyc0746

macrumors 6502
Apr 3, 2019
259
102
Liverpool, UK
You can turn on an option in Accessibility>Keyboard called 'Enable Typing Feedback' which will let you 'echo characters' as you type them - unfortunately it reads out the letter, rather than just beeping.

2020-07-18_14-14-56.png
 

Sciuriware

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 4, 2014
758
165
Gelderland
You can turn on an option in Accessibility>Keyboard called 'Enable Typing Feedback' which will let you 'echo characters' as you type them - unfortunately it reads out the letter, rather than just beeping.

View attachment 934991
To be blunt but honest ..... yet another way to get picked up by those nice men in their white suits ......
In other words, this is torture!
;JOOP!
 

pr3jker

macrumors newbie
Jul 18, 2020
10
2
Keyclick 1.4 beta works on Catalina 10.15.6.
The trick is to stop Keyclick, then grant permissions (on Privacy > Accessibility) to the "Keyclick server" app, located in the Application support user library folder. Then restart the server. As simple as that.
 
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ignatius345

macrumors 604
Aug 20, 2015
7,618
13,032
Been using Keyclick for years. I find that on a quiet MacBook keyboard, the auditory feedback helps me type with much better "flow". In a quiet environment, I'll even put on headphones for the purpose of using it without bothering others, if I have a lot of typing to do. On my desktop, I often use a mechanical keyboard which has a bit of sound of its own so it's not really an issue.

On my new MacBook Air 2020, I have found that Keyclick (and also KeyUp, see below) doesn't register sounds quickly enough to keep up with typing. Oddly, though, if you have GarageBand running, even just idle in the background, it keeps the "Core Audio" process more responsive, and Keyclick works as expected. That comes at a cost of higher processor usage, though, which you can verify in Activity Monitor.

Unfortunately, Keyclick is only very sporadically updated. The little user forum on the developer's website went dead a few years ago and he seldom if ever releases updates. I've been able to keep it working on Catalina and hopefully it'll continue to function under Big Sur.

I've found one other utility which gives nice typing sound feedback: KeyUp, which can be found here: http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/labs/ Its primary purpose seems to be to put a virtual keyboard on your screen (not entirely sure why) but that can easily be hidden. It's got a number of sound sets, including a few typewriter ones. The developer seems a bit more active than the Keyclick guy, fwiw.
 
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