Keyboard is not responding to some keyboard key presses

[MotorIB]

Ive noticed an issue with my keyboard where I am seeing the the keystrokes not respond. It's frequent and random and only seems to be happening in InDesign.

I am currently working my way through a InDesign document making amends based upon PDF comments made by a proofreader. Simple things like changing a word starting with a capital letter to a lower case letter, or changing '&' to 'and'.

Example 1: I hilghlight the character I want to change, press the relevant key on the keyboard, but nothing happens, I press again and still nothing happens, I press a third time and I end up with two of the same character!

Example 2: I highlight '&' and type 'and', but I end up with 'nd'. 

I'm sure it's not the keyboard because this isn't happening in any other application. And, if I then continue to type a longer sentence in InDesign rather than replace highlighted text, no charaters are missing! It's only happening to the first character that I type.

Any ideas on what's happening? Is there a setting in InDesign that I have adjusted? I anyone else experiencing this?

I'm using:

15 inch 2019 Macbook Pro Intel Core i9

Magic Keyboard (Version 2.0.9)

InDesign 19.3 (the most up-to-date at the time of writing)

macOS Sonoma 14.3.1 (again, the most up-to-date).

[Doc Maik]

My best guess: either the system has too little CPU power left or ID is doing something in the background that would stop other things for a moment. Example: preflight. When activated, every character you type starts a complete document check. ID would then be in permanent stress. Other example: dynamic spell checker. Though this isn't as CPU hungry.

Suggestion: if preflight is on, turn off and try again.

[MotorIB]

@Doc Maik I've just discovered what's causing the issue, but have no solution as of yet.

[MotorIB]

I've just discovered it's this box that appears for alternative characters when you highlight a single character. While this is active it prevents keystrokes being registered. It takes a few seconds to disappear, and if you leave your cursor over the highlighted character, the box doesn't disappear at all and therefore deactivates keystrokes on your keyboard!

This would explain why it never happens when trying to change a lowercase character to an uppercase character, because as soon as you press the Shift key, the box dissappears!

This is exceptionally frustrating and I am certain this has never happened before, otherwise I would've noticed it after 20+ years of using InDesign. Either that or I have been exceptionally fortunate to have never left my cursor hovering over the selected character and have been slow (which I am not) at typing it's replacement!

How does this get fixed? Is this a setting that I have triggered or is it something new that has been introduced in the latest versions of InDesign?

[leo.r]

I've just discovered it's this box that appears for alternative characters when you highlight a single character. While this is active it prevents keystrokes being registered. It takes a few seconds to disappear, and if you leave your cursor over the highlighted character, the box doesn't disappear at all and therefore deactivates keystrokes on your keyboard!

How does this get fixed? Is this a setting that I have triggered or is it something new that has been introduced in the latest versions of InDesign?

By @MotorIB

I think it's one of these options in Preferences > Advanced Type:

[HARSHIKA_VERMA]

Hi @MotorIB,

Hope you're doing well!

We would like to follow up on the issue. Are you able to resolve the issue by following our expert suggestion? Please feel free to update the discussion if you need further assistance from us.

We would also like to know if you're using an external keyboard. Did you try using any other Keyboard?

We would be happy to help.

Thanks,

Harshika