Mac 911
When you can’t type a certain character on your Mac, here’s how to troubleshoot it
Q: In macOS 10.12.5, the lower case y is not working in some situations, such as replying to email in Gmail, and when filling out some forms or comments on certain sites. How can I fix this?
— W.D.Synder
A: My first reaction was that W.D. needed a new keboard (sorry), but that’s probably the last resort. I’d go down this list.
The Speech section of the Accessibility preference pane could be a clue to a keystroke problem.
Is it only in a browser this problem occurs? Try a different browser with the same sites. It’s possible some setting is grabbing or suppressing y, although I’d be hard pressed to guess what. A textexpansion program or system shortcut would seemingly consistently intercept that letter in all circumstances in a single app or across the system.
If you do find it’s only a problem in one browser, then check extensions or plugins, depending on the offending browser app, and see if you recognize everything installed. It’s plausible that adware you installed along with some third-party app without realizing it is intercepting keystrokes. Disable or remove them and check if the y now works.
If that doesn’t work or you actually have the problem everywhere, make sure that the speech settings in the Accessibility system preference pane haven’t been modified to use y as the trigger to speak selected text. Some people in years past found that was
