Mysterious Mac Login Failures? Check Your Input Source
The other night, I received a somewhat worried phone call from Tonya’s father while finishing dinner out with friends. He and my mother-in-law had upgraded her M1 MacBook Air to macOS 26 Tahoe, but afterward, they couldn’t log in. An error message also seemed to imply that her Apple Account password was incorrect. Although she uses the machine relatively lightly, she has two important Pages documents in progress: a memoir-writing class assignment stored in iCloud and a talk she’s preparing on her desktop. Neither was backed up. 🙄
Troubleshooting such problems over the phone is nearly impossible, and we were slated to visit the next morning anyway, so I suggested to my father-in-law that, in the meantime, he try logging in to her iCloud account on his Mac to see whether her credentials still worked and to verify that one of the documents was there. The email they sent later that evening confirmed that there were no problems with her Apple Account or iCloud storage.
The next morning, Tonya arrived first and confirmed that the MacBook Air’s keyboard was working but that it wouldn’t accept the login password. Happily, when I arrived shortly afterward, I was able to identify the problem at a glance. Do you see the tell-tale clue in the screenshot below?
The key is the Input Source menu in the upper-right corner. Normally, it reads U.S., but it had switched to ABC – AZERTY. At that moment, I didn’t know that it was a French keyboard layout, but I did know that it was different from the standard U.S. QWERTY layout. QWERTY and AZERTY share most key positions, but the A and Q are swapped—and her password included an A. Since she was typing in a password field that showed only bullets, the input source swap wasn’t clear. Once I clicked the Input Source menu and switched back to the U.S. keyboard, her password worked, and she was in. That also likely explained the problem with the Apple Account password.
She doesn’t speak or write French, and they had no idea how the AZERTY keyboard had been added to her Input Sources list. Tom Gewecke, my go-to expert on Mac language issues, said it’s not uncommon for people to report input sources being added during macOS updates, though mostly Spanish layouts that affect only punctuation keys.
Indeed, when I navigated to System Settings > Keyboard > Input Sources > Edit, the ABC – AZERTY input source was listed, so I promptly deleted it. If you have any input sources listed that you don’t use—especially if you don’t know how they got there—remove them immediately.
The only remaining question was how AZERTY became the active input source. Although there’s no way to know for sure, my theory is that, shortly before or during the unfamiliar process of upgrading macOS, she accidentally pressed the Globe key, which, by default, changes the input source. (Maybe that shouldn’t be the default, Apple?) If you don’t use multiple input sources, I recommend switching the Globe key to Show Emoji & Symbols, Start Dictation, or Do Nothing. Do that in System Settings > Keyboard, too.
All’s well that ends well, and my father-in-law promptly moved her talk from the desktop to iCloud, where, even if it’s not properly backed up, it will at least be available on other devices.
Although this may seem like a highly specific story that I’m telling merely to boost my tech cred, there are two more general lessons to keep in mind:
- When troubleshooting, widen your field of view: In this case, the only reason I solved the problem and Tonya didn’t was that she was focused on the password field at the bottom center of the screen, whereas the necessary clue appeared only in the top right. Beyond the physical field of view in play here, successful troubleshooting is often aided by noticing behaviors that may not seem directly related to the problem at hand. Don’t focus too hard, or you might miss something that will set you on the right path.
- Avoid unnecessary configurations: Although my in-laws had no idea how the AZERTY input source was added, many people intentionally dabble with other input sources, languages, and regions. If you or someone you know has strayed from or added to their keyboard, language, or region defaults, that could introduce troubleshooting complexity later. In general, if you’re not using some configuration or don’t remember why you added it, delete it to avoid future confusion.
My mom somehow did this on her iPhone the other day. Though in that case, she could see the keyboard layout was different and called me about that complaining that her keyboard letters were in the wrong place and she wanted it back to normal.
She is 85 and disabled and has hand/finger issues making phone use more difficult, so the only thing I could come up with was that she somehow switched to a different keyboard layout accidental. It didn’t happen during an upgrade process or anything like that.
Ironic timing! I recently had the Input Source problem but it was on a not-recently-used MBAir running Monterey.
Its physical keyboard is non-US and I have 1-2 other input sources set up intentionally, as I use it sometimes with a bluetooth or wired US keyboard. Having focused on the keyboard itself and the dot-filled password field, I ended up locking the Mac, first for 5 minutes then 24 hours
. But that breather gave me time to think what else it could be. Next day I saw the wrong Input Source and discovered I could change it at the lock screen.
Luckily I had applied @ace’s first General Rule of Troubleshooting without even realizing it!
Additionally, maybe it’s a Monterey glitch but my Input Source choice doesn’t stick. Every restart I need to reselect the software keyboard that matches the physical keys in my account password in order to log in, and after restart it reverts to the wrong one. I suppose I could change the password to keys that are the same in all input sources… So now on pretty much every Mac every restart I’m looking upper right to see the input source.
When I got a MBAir with the Globe key, I quickly turned it to Do Nothing. A couple of times I’d wanted to use it as Fn I think, or maybe tapped it by mistake and got the Emoji panel, finally realizing that the key had been assigned to it perhaps in an update. Clearly I’m not using enough Emojis, since I hadn’t realized I needed a dedicated key for it!
Many years ago I decided to learn to touch type, and thought I might as well make it easy for myself by using a Dvorak keyboard. In those days you could pry off the keys and reattach them to match the new layout, and that’s what I did. At that time (maybe ~OS9) you could not change the input menu until you had logged in. I can’t remember now how it happened, but at one point, after a restart, I had to enter my password using a different layout to the one shown on the keys. I think I switched the layout back to Qwerty but restarted before moving the keys back to their Qwerty positions. And having but one machine I couldn’t look up the layout on another, so it was all muscle memory!
Tapping Fn/Globe should normally switch input sources right away with no additional click needed, so it can be extremely easy to get the wrong layout if you have more than one item on the input sources list.
It’s not uncommon in the ASC forums to find people who have extra input sources mysteriously added to their settings, often after an update. But in my experience it’s usually Spanish, which only causes problems with punctuation keys on the right edge of the keyboard.
A variant of this has happened to me often. (I worked with the deployment of Macs in the past.)
, maybe because I always had several accounts, and also all the Macs were controlled by Remote Desktop. In later years, I have gotten this habit when I make passwords: I check if it works on both US and Norwegian.
In my case on macOS, the problem has been that the Norwegian keyboard had been removed from Input Sources, and the default US was the only option. It has never been fatal, as far as I can remember
Thanks for the correction—I was moving too quickly so I saw the popover and clicked, not realizing it would change on its own if I just waited a second. Fixing…
Depending on how you have it configured in your system’s keyboard settings, tapping Fn could do one of:
I’m not sure if/how you configure what the key should do from the login screen.
Not aware of that being possible, afaik one can only change the Input Source from the login/lock screen by clicking on it in the Status Menu and selecting from the menu that comes down.
I just locked my screen (MBA on 26.3) and the Globe/Fn key doesn’t seem to do anything. I have 3 active software keyboards and tapping it didn’t change the displayed Source. Then I realized I had already set it to Do Nothing. Changed to Change Input Source and still on lock screen Globe/Fn didn’t change the source. Seems the menu is the only way from lock/login screen.
Might be @tom3 was suggesting the OP’s mom had inadvertently and unawares tapped the Globe/Fn key during the update or putting the device to sleep (would be quite easy if gripping the MBAir with the left hand in the side middle and closing the lid with the right hand) or shutting down.
I use an external keyboard on my desktop, so my first question was “what is the Globe/Fn keyboard.”
Now that I found out, I want to point out something else that cause unexpected changes. My MacMini 2024 tends to respond slowly when I wake it up, so after I type my open password (call it GOBBLE) once, all it does is wake up enough to respond to me entering the password a second time. If the Mini fell asleep with the cursor with an app open, the first time I type GOBBLE the only thing I see happen is that the Mini wakes up prepared to respond to the open password, and typing GOBBLE wakes it up fully. However, sometimes it wakes up partly and enters GOBBLE into the app where it fell asleep. So sometimes I’ll find a random GOBBLE in a place in the open app was ready to enter text, and I can see how this keyboard response delay could also change random settings in other ways.
I’m in the opposite camp where my users have various languages and thus, have the inputs available. But they know this, and know to look in the upper right for the keyboard whether US or other language input. Yet they get login issue. Its the screen awake via key!
But let’s talk about the issue that Apple makes with this: if you only have your name and pwd prompt, like I do on MDM managed Mac deployments at work, one tends to “wake” the locked screen by hitting the spacebar. And thus, the computer wakes up and you enter your username and password and … nope. You enter the password again, and nope. And unwittingly, you lock yourself out for a time limit. I’ve gotten a few calls for help on this, usually after a period of time away for the user.
The password, its correct. You aren’t losing it! It’s that spacebar space infront of your username you cannot see. Its worse with LiquidGlass.
Waking up the computer via keyboard has a risk. I would suggest the ESC key or using a mouse click/trackpad click. Or if hitting the spacebar, to backup/delete the space. This isn’t a problem on wake with lid opening on portables that I know. I’ve only seen this with desktops like iMacs or Mac Mini/Mac Studio models.
Having been bitten by that many times, I have forced myself to get into the habit of waking a screen by tapping the CTRL or SHIFT key.
You may want to tell your users to get into a similar habit.
And I agree that this is something that Apple should fix. The keystroke that wakes the screen should not be sent to any app, including the login window. Of course, if you tap the key more than once, then there’s not much Apple can do, aside from maybe stripping leading spaces from user-name fields.
That’s what I do, perhaps using some other modifier key.
Same here. I have always used shift. It’s two large keys and I don’t risk messing up anything.
When did Apple replace the fn with a globe on the keyboard? My 2015 MBP has the fn and of course all the keyboards I used/use with my iMac just have the fn key even my brand new Matias tactilepro.
I thought I was the only one who ended up in this situation . Recently I spent almost half a day trying to troubleshoot why I could not log on to my main user account. I had no problems logging into other user accounts; just not the important user account. Eventually I remembered I had switched to the Spanish keyboard before I went away for a week, and had forgotten to reset to the English keyboard. Nice tip about using CTRL to start the computer.
Recent posts like this remind me a funny computerese thing many years ago, I can’t recall the source, if it was to do with Macs or Windows etc but went something like: a manual or computer teacher was referring to ‘press any key’ and the new user/student was confounded, trying to find a key on the keyboard with ‘any’ printed on it…
I remember that. I’m guessing it was in one the comp.sys.mac.* usenet groups.
I have such a key:
The key-caps were promotional items from a trade show.
Well, that explains why the globe ISN’T on my Mid 2015 MBP or my many A1243 extended keyboards if it was just added 2 - 3 years ago. I’m guessing non-Apple manufacturers like Matias just ignore it as another example of Apple’s non-standard concepts.
Looks like you missed the point of my question. I KNOW where the fn key is located on the keyboards. I was asking WHEN did APPLE add the globe icon to it. And since my Matias keyboard was made AFTER it was added, I guessed that Matias decided to NOT add the globe to their Mac keyboards (at least at this time). From the article Adam linked, it looks like it was done in 2022 or 2023.
Apple keyboards that include a numeric keypad place the Globe/fn key in the group of function keys between the alpha and numeric keyboards (On both my old extended keyboard and my current Magic Keyboard, it is directly under the F13 key). Recently Apple has defined it as a modifier key for window related actions; ‘Center’ is Control-Globe-C and ‘Fill’ is Control-Globe-F. While not a problem to use on a normal keyboard, it’s quite a stretch on the these keyboards.
This is the current Magic Keyboard with numeric keypad:
It looks like what used to be the “fn” key below the function keys is now a “right click” key. And Apple added the globe/fn key to the lower left corner (my Apple extended keyboard that came with a 2017 iMac has three keys to the left of the space bar).
They must have made the change when they replaced the Lightning port with a USB-C one.
The Macbook M1 Air that came out in late 2020 has the globe icon so it goes back a bit further.
OK, but it wasn’t on the Aluminum Keyboards that I have which, according to MacTracker, was discontinued in 2017. So it looks like Apple first added the globe icon no earlier than 2018 but no later than 2020.
Here is an Apple Support Discussion thread from 2016 that discusses the Globe key on an iPad keyboard:
This blog entry dates the iPad Globe to 2015 and the Mac Globe to 2019:
(the blog also gives a possible reason for Matias not adding the Globe…Apple has limited who has access to the keycodes for Globe/fn)
ETA: I was clicking around the aresluna website above and found the site owner has a connection to Glenn Fleishman! Small world…
I have a A2449 with a Lightning connector and a globe/fn key, so the globe was added before the switch to USB-C.
I’m not referring to the existence of the Globe icon; I’m referring to the placement of the Globe/fn key on an Apple Keyboard with Numeric keys.
According to MacTracker, the A2449 keyboard is the Touch ID version, but without a numeric keypad. The version with a Numeric Keypad is A2520, which I have, places the Globe/fn key in its traditional place for the Fn key on such a keyboard–in the top center island of keys below the F13 key. If there is no numeric keypad, the key was always located on the left lower corner of the keyboard.
The USB-C successor to the A2520 (the A3119) relocated the Globe/fnkey to a new key in the lower left corner and redefined the key under the F13 key. . That key is now the Contextual Menu and right-clicks the current selection.