Option key not working with click
There was a time when I wanted to save pictures in Firefox or Safari all I had to do was hold down option and then click. It was a like a left click on the PC mouse. A menu would appear to copy, save, etc.
Now this is not working. What do I need to do to have this working again?
I have two computers doing this now, both G4. I'm thinking some recent update must have disabled this feature.
The control key is not working with the click. Is there a way to test the control and option keys to see if they are still working?
• Go to Apple menu > System Preferences > International. Click the "Input Menu" tab.
• Check the boxes for "Keyboard Viewer" and "Show Input menu in menubar."
• Go to the Input menu (in my case it's a little US flag: this will vary depending on your default country) and click "Keyboard Viewer." A little window reminiscent of OS 7/8/9's KeyCaps will come up.
• As you press modifier keys, they will be highlighted in the keyboard viewer. If a key doesn't highlight when you press it, the key is inoperative.
Got the keyboard viewer up, thank you. Cntl and option are the only keys not working according to the test. Now to figure out what turned those off.
Go to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard tab. Press the "Modifier Keys" button in the lower left corner.
Check the drop-down menus for the Option and Control keys. Are they set for "No action" ? If so, change them to the appropriate selection and close the pref pane.
If they were set properly, try changing them to some other setting, close the pref pane (to save changes), then go back and set them back to their proper settings and close the pref pane again.
Any change?
Same behavior if you hook up a USB keyboard? In short, is this a software problem, or is it in fact a hardware failure in the keyboard?
Try control-click instead of option-click. That's the usual trigger to bring up a contextual menu.
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