What causes the popup alternate characters from showing? I have the latest version of Mountain Lion 10.8.4 but can't use the new hold key to show variations option. So, when I press the n key and hold it down, it would be nice to see the two alternate ñ and ń characters.

I press but nothing happens. Does anyone have ideas on how to fix this?
Are there any background applications or kernel extensions that could disable the popovers? For example KeyRemap4MacBook disables them.

What input method do you use? The popovers don't work with all input methods, or custom keyboard layouts that are not saved in the bundle format.

You could also try to run defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true and reopen applications. Or delete ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.HIToolbox.*.plist and restart.

Does it work on other accounts, or did it work in earlier versions of OS X? Is there a process named PressAndHold?

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Character Picker stopped working in OS X Lion