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#50613·PowerToys

Quick-Accent DEactivation key

Author: e-t-lCreated Sep 17, 2026Updated Sep 17, 2026
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Description of the new feature / enhancement

There are 3 ways this could be implemented:

  1. Press the Deactivation Key AFTER down-pressing the letter key. When the Quick Accent popup is activated, pressing a modifier key (like Enter Space, or Esc) should deactivate it, to allow Windows' default Character Repeat behavior to occur. (Note: The modifier key should be intercepted, so e.g. pressing Enter would NOT send the Enter keyevent to any other window.)
  2. Press the Deactivation Key BEFORE down-pressing the letter key. To suppress the Quick Accent popup from activating in the first place, press down a modifier key before the letter key, thereby allowing Character Repeat to occur. (The main challenge I see with this option is to find a key that doesn't already send an (important) keyevent when pressed. Perhaps CapsLock? It would require intercepting the default CapsLock keyevent so that system's CapsLock state is changed on keyup, instead of the default keydown. That way, to perform a normal CapsLock keypress, the user would press and release CapsLock, like normal; to use it as the QA Deactivation Key, the user would press down CapsLock, press and hold down a letter key, then release both. When used as the Deactivation Key, the system CapsLock state should not change.)
  3. Triple-press-then-hold a letter key to suppress QA and trigger "character repeat." To suppress Quick Accent from activating, the letter key is quickly pressed 3 times and held down on the 3rd press. Unlike options #1 and #2, No separate modifier key is required. Since the point of Character Repeat is to write the same letter many times, this method basically "gets it started" by making the user type the first 2 manually; when the 3rd one is held down, Character Repeat takes over. (I suggested a triple-press-and-hold instead of double- in order to reduce the likelihood of accidental triggers. For example, typing the word "continuüm" requires the user press + press-and-hold the U key. However, I think it's very unlikely that a user would need to type the same letter 3 times with an accent on only the last one— aka my proposed action, press + press + press-and-hold).

Scenario when this would be used?

Now that there's an option to activate Quick Accent by simply holding down the key without pressing any second key, it totally disables "character repeat," aka the default Windows behavior when holding down a key.

Supporting information

This could be integrated with #23496, or it could be a separate key.

Source: microsoft/PowerToys

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