What are the symptoms of the “sticky keys problem”?

Mike,

The Virtual Stuck Key Syndrome is characterized by some metatool key being electronically “stuck”, so that (for example) you want to draw a line, but no matter what you do, you get a slur. You want to enter a staccato, but you only get an accent.

This has been an issue for years, but it manifests on many computers, and there seems to be no way to fix it at Finale’s end, because nobody can assign it to a particular action. Tapping all of the keys repeatedly seems to clear it up for some people, but I have found a restart is the most dependable way.

Thanks for the explanation. I’ve never run into this with Finale but I have with many apps as they “freeze” and nothing seems to work. Hitting all the keys doesn’t really do anything except take time—doing nothing but waiting awhile has the same effect. I’m pretty sure that the problem is free RAM — or rather, the lack of it. This is why a reboot works.

One thing to try is to pull up Terminal and type in the following: sudo purge  It will ask for your Admin password. It will free up some RAM but not as much as a reboot does.

Once I got into the habit of rebooting daily, apps no longer froze on my system.

Mike, thank you for explanation. I would like to add, that this behavior appears in Finale only and since I have on all my machines 16GB RAM (not too much, but surely good enough), I am pretty sure that the problem is not there. I am able to get rid of that tapping all of the keys, but as I said - I can't afford it, if there are other processes running in background, many of them use keyboard shortcuts and it happened to.me already, that I even deleted/renamed some files when I tapped the keys instead of restarted the Mac.
If this problem would be solved, I am pretty sure, that I can use all my macs without restarting.

I am pretty sure, that I can use all my macs without restarting.

Yea, people with this problem always post that they never need to reboot their Macs. I am now absolutely certain that I’m right. The apps that froze for me were Word 2008 and Digital Performer when certain plugins were being used—never Finale.

Reboot daily. The problem should go away.

I rebooted yesterday and just a minute ago, started Finale and tried to assign Metatool R (assigned to rehearsal number). The result is another Text expression (Tacet)  and even if I assign R as Metatool for Rehearsal number again, when I hit R and left click the result is (Tacet) again. 

Reboot helps, but:

1) I have never had to reboot because of the same behaviour in another application and I am forced to reboot because of sticky keys in Finale only. That is really the only software related reason.

2) I do not think, that rebooting is the (correct) way, how to solve this long term bug, if it appears in Finale only. It is at least time consuming, especially when I have to wait for another processes running behind.

Juraj,

I agree with you. I have only experienced this in Finale, and no other programs. Unfortunately, Finale has never been able to duplicate the problem, and so, can't find a fix. Maybe when the completely rewritten 64-bit version appears, it will fix the bug. Meanwhile, the reboot works for me.

Not enough free RAM is the issue. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind — especially when I was able to duplicate it this morning.

I remembered that I let my Apple engineer son-in-law swap my 2012 MacBook Pro with my daughters over Thanksgiving leaving me with one that has only 8GB RAM. I fired it up with a couple of other applications in Catalina and it froze. I measured the free RAM and there was only 774K. 

You say that you run other processes after you reboot but don’t say what they are. It’s academic anyway. You don’t have enough RAM for what you are doing and more explanation won’t change that. Being logged into certain web sites decreases available RAM, BTW, and necessitates rebooting more often.  

Reboot, stay off the internet, don’t run “other processes” while running Finale. 16GB is more than enough RAM for Finale but, apparently, not enough for everything else you do. Learn how to monitor RAM usage in the OS or one of the zillions of apps that let you do this—Google is your friend.

For what I do, 32GB required that I reboot daily when I had my 2010 iMac — when I had only 20GB, I often had to reboot again in the afternoon. On my current machine, I have 128GB. Now that I’ve upgraded Office to 2017 and no longer use Word 2008 plus DP 10.1, I can run a couple of weeks without rebooting so now I do it every Monday — when I’m down to less than 40 or so, I get a little nervous. My music industry day gig requires me to boot into 125–200 web sites every morning—I have them spread over 3 monitors. I am also a very experienced Mac technician.and have had a side gig maintaining Mac based networks here. 

Mike,

I am sure that you are quite experienced user. I mentioned "other processes" in my initial post: "copying some files in finder". Hopefully it does not sound too academic.

I use Finale on daily basis since version 2.2. I do not like to recall how many years, but surely 25+.

The sticky keys problem is here last couple of years and I have to repeat, that neither 128 GB RAM nor often rebooting seems to be a correct solution to me.

Follow my suggestions and see if you still have a problem. That MM cannot reproduce it and I can tells me quite a bit.

Thank you all for your responses. I think, that everything has been said, so I wish you all the best in New Year!