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Comment by kazinator | Hacker News Reader

My work Macbook sometimes drops random characters from the lock screen password input. You hit a key and a black dot does not appear; the password is consequently rejected.

It's not exactly this: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/458099/macos-lock-...

The system is not lagging at all.

It's not this:

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/08/29/mac-wont-accept-correct-l...

It's a bit like this, but only for the system password dialog and nowhere else:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1azl16n/macos_skippi...

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Oh my god, I just thought my typing accuracy mysteriously dropped off at the Lock Screen.

My password is long enough that it’s not clear whether a new dot has appeared, but I get frequent rejections.

To be clear, I diagnosed the missing dot issue by typing very slowly and carefully. The issue appears in repeatable streaks for me. For instance, the second character of the password might be dropped. If I repeat this several times, typing very deliberately and slowly, I can see the behavior repeat: no response for second character. Two workarounds are to just backspace and try again until the behavior goes away, or just notice that a character was dropped and type it again.

I thought I was the only one dealing with this!

Made me consider that my magic keyboard was getting old or having bluetooth issues, but it does not happen on ANY other inputs.

Same here. I have never unlocked the macbook successfully the 1st time around (for a good 10 years), I always get a "wrong password" and have to re-enter.

My initial guess is that the text edit control has "select all content" set initially, so when you enter the 1st character, it's selected, and when you enter the following characters they overwrite that, essentially chopping off the 1st letter of the password (which is then incorrect, obviously). Unbelievable that this was never fixed (especially with IT-managed laptops that lock themselves very quickly).

This happens to me if external monitors are connected. It was way worse last year when I literally had to wair for the monitor to "light up", and after a recent update the situation got better but it's still there if I type fast without "waiting" for the external monitors.

Same. When I boot my computer and reach the password prompt, whatever character I type first inputs two dots, I have to clear those two dots first and type the password again. It is very annoying.

Wow I've run into this too! I made my own keyboard with custom firmware so I assumed it was from that, but it's been completely reliable outside of the password prompt.

I use a 6-digit PIN to unlock my iPhone. I get it right less than half the time. Often one or two numbers just fail to register. ISTR someone else confirmed this bug.

I always thought this was due to Bluetooth issues or me mistyping the password. Thanks for confirming that this was not the case.

Thanks for pointing out that I'm not crazy

I believe this can occur when specific USB HID peripherals are connected. Try unplugging all your USB devices.

This one affects me too. It's maddening.

Surveillance cameras and WiFi sensors of keystrokes will be disappointed when this is fixed.

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