The Smartphone Habit on Desktop
Apple brought a very popular iOS feature over to the Mac desktop: if you rapidly tap the Spacebar twice, the operating system will automatically insert a period followed by a single space, assuming you are trying to end a sentence.
While this is a fantastic time-saver when typing with thumbs on an iPhone glass screen, it is often infuriating on a physical Mac keyboard. Fast touch typists, programmers who use spaces for code indentation, or anyone who frequently double-spaces for formatting reasons will constantly find their text littered with unwanted periods. You can easily turn off this mobile-first behavior on your desktop.
How to Turn Off the Double-Space Period Shortcut
You can disable this automatic punctuation feature in your Mac’s Keyboard settings.
- Click the Apple Logo in the top-left corner of your screen and select System Settings… (or System Preferences on older macOS versions).
- Scroll down the left-hand sidebar and click on Keyboard.
- Under the “Text Input” section, click the Edit… button next to “Input Sources”.
- A new window will slide down. Look through the list of toggles for the option labelled “Add period with double-space”.
- Toggle the switch to the Off position (or uncheck the box).
- Click the Done button to save your changes.
Your Mac will now treat the Spacebar exactly as a traditional typewriter would. Pressing it twice will simply insert two blank spaces, and you will need to type periods manually.