Talk:Sticky keys

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I really wish I could turn off sticky keys, the number of times I'm lost in thought with shift pressed and then get completely sidetracked trying to turn the darn thing off again. Ive googled for a registry hack or DLL removal to no avail.

Italic textBrad:shame noob

brad;sup mark

Well at least you have let the rest of us know that no-one knows how to turn it off. Microsoft Help and knowledge base have no entry for Sticky Keys ...

You can turn em off without modifying or damaging Windows, you know. --Isequals 04:58, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

This article seems to be a bit Windows-centric, different desktops have different ways to activate sticky keys. Klacquement 00:57, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

sticky keys is teh ghey

If there IS a way to turn them off maybe someone should write it into the article. I just spent a good 15 minutes trying to get my keyboard to work again. It wouldn't even let me turn the computer off. (Bishusui 03:48, 11 October 2006 (UTC))

There is a way to turn it off. Open up Control Panel: Accessibility Options and there's a Sticky Keys box right at the top (under the "keyboard" tab). Disable it, and perhaps also disable the Settings "Use Shortcut" option as well. Tada! -JC 09:20, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

That is how i turned mine off. I don't see how you guys find it so hard to turn it off

[edit] Warranted Criticism

I have removed this from the main article, contributed by an anonymous user:

In addition it is virtually useless for 99.999% of all computer users and it will turn on when you do not want it to, and it takes a google "Sticky Keys" search to determine how to turn it off and there is no way to completely disable this "feature". Under the category of "wonderfully ingenious, and creative ideas that should never have been invented" Sticky Keys is very highly rated. Benefits of Sticky Keys include "Distracting the train of thought of the user at the least opportune moment such as when you are in the middle of a very important report, or writing a novel or balancing a financial spreadsheet". Sticky Keys has been reported as being non-Sarbane Oxley compliant.

I must respond to this. Sticky Keys is useful for some users, especially those with physical handicaps (and thus an inability to press two keys simultaneously). Perhaps it isn't useful for everyone, but this is an accessibility option. It will only turn on if you have it enabled --- and it is extremely easy (without resorting to Google) to disable by going into the Accessibility settings in Control Panel (which it tells you to do so when you enable Sticky Keys --- it tells you what you've done, and how to change it if you want to). This baseless disregard for the usefulness of Sticky Keys (for those with disabilities) and overexaggeration of the difficulties involved in disabling it is very much against Wikipedia's policies of both NOR and NPOV. Really, now, I disabled Sticky Keys for my computer (as I would find it frustrating to happen whenver I hit shift a few times while I'm thinking about what I'm typing) and it was as easy and painless as disabling a screensaver. -JC 02:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I must respond to this response. Sticky Keys is useless for virtually everyone but Microsoft put it in and enables it to be turned on by default. The first three times I ran into this problem it took me over an hour of searching the web for what it is, and how to turn it off because, as typical, Windows will tell you what you did wrong and which low-level check box to change but IT DOES NOT TELL YOU HOW TO GET THERE TO CHANGE IT. Of course it is extremely easy to disable when you already know how to do it, because you had to go research the steps several times over two years. Also, disabling Sticky Keys is not as easy as the help files will make it seem: Turning it On and Off is different from Disabling it. This is not detailed anywhere in help. So once you've turned it off after an hour of cursing Bill Gates, it may still be enabled so you will run into it again several months later. Fortunately this total disregard for the wants and needs of 99.999999999% of Windows users has not stopped Microsoft from telling you what you want - so they enable it by default. I have been writing software and using computers for over 25 years and I have not met anyone who uses Sticky Keys, and those I have met with disabilities use special and better quality interfaces and keyboards.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.236.143.130 (talk • contribs) 00:53, 28 February 2007.

I will respond again: when you first activate StickyKeys, it tells you what you've done, immediately. It says, and I quote:

Pressing the SHIFT key 5 times turns on StickyKeys. StickyKeys lets you use the SHIFT, CTRL, ALT, or Windows Logo keys by pressing one key at a time.

To keep StickyKeys on, click OK.

To cancel StickyKeys, click Cancel.

To deactivate the key combination for StickyKeys, click Settings.

I then press "Settings" and it opens the accessibility options. At the top is the StickyKeys section. It has a checkbox to see if you want to use StickyKeys, and describes it as allowing you to use the aforementioned keys by pressing one key at a time. There's a Settings button here, too. Pressing it brings up another screen with a rather obvious checkbox saying "use shortcut". So with that disabled, you'll never activate the StickyKeys shortcut.

I'm sorry, but I find that really easy to disable. Regardless of your experiences, I think you're overplaying it simply because of the lack of particularly detailed documention (it may be misleading to say that "Use StickyKeys" is off, but still have the shortcut enabled, but that's not an issue with the option --- pressing shift five times just toggles StickyKeys on and off, so turning StickyKeys off means you can still turn it on again using the shortcut. It's the shortcut people can't figure out to disable for some reason, even though it's fairly obvious how to do that). -JC 08:56, 21 March 2007 (UTC)