GNOME.org

Turn on sticky keys

Sticky keys allows you to type keyboard shortcuts one key at a time rather than having to hold down all of the keys at once. For example, the Super+Tab shortcut switches between windows. Without sticky keys turned on, you would have to hold down both keys at the same time; with sticky keys turned on, you would press Super and then Tab to do the same.

You might want to turn on sticky keys if you find it difficult to hold down several keys at once.

  1. Open the Activities overview and start typing Settings.

  2. Click on Settings.

  3. Click Accessibility in the sidebar to open the panel.

  4. Press Typing Assist (AccessX) in the Typing section.

  5. Switch the Sticky Keys switch to on.

Quickly turn sticky keys on and off

Switch the Enable by Keyboard switch to turn sticky keys on and off from the keyboard. When this option is selected, you can press Shift five times in a row to enable or disable sticky keys.

You can also turn sticky keys on and off by clicking the accessibility icon on the top bar and selecting Sticky Keys. The accessibility icon is visible when one or more settings have been enabled from the Accessibility panel.

If you press two keys at once, you can have sticky keys turn itself off temporarily to let you enter a keyboard shortcut in the normal way.

For example, if you have sticky keys turned on but press Super and Tab simultaneously, sticky keys would not wait for you to press another key if you had this option turned on. It would wait if you only pressed one key, however. This is useful if you are able to press some keyboard shortcuts simultaneously (for example, keys that are close together), but not others.

Select Disable if two keys are pressed together to enable this.

You can have the computer make a “beep” sound when you start typing a keyboard shortcut with sticky keys turned on. This is useful if you want to know that sticky keys is expecting a keyboard shortcut to be typed, so the next key press will be interpreted as part of a shortcut. Select Beep when a modifier key is pressed to enable this.