I've somehow enabled overtype mode in Slack and I can't get back to insert mode

Question

No, dear readers, as the Internet might have you believe, none of these things work on a 2017 Macbook Pro, the kind with the touchbar:

• Fn+Enter
• Fn+M
• Fn+.
• Fn+Option+Enter

Somehow, someway, when I was pasting some text I ended out getting into overtype mode in Slack and now it's stuck that way.

Internet documentation might work if I had an older computer or one with keys that I don't have, but there's nothing I've been able to find that will tell me how to turn off this dratted overtype mode. And it's seriously annoying.

Any clue how to turn it off?

Answer 1

My original solution (crossed out below) no longer works. Things that do work:

• If you have a Mac keyboard, press the Help key to toggle between insert and replace mode
• If you have a Windows keyboard, press the Insert (or Ins) key to toggle between insert and replace mode
• Restart Slack (quit and relaunch); refreshing no longer works

I contacted Slack support and was told to use ⌘+R to do a quick refresh and reset the mode from overwrite to insert.

From Slack support team:

> Thanks for writing in about this! We've seen this occur on Mac computers recently as well, and the good news is there is an easy way to switch! To reset the mode from overwrite to insert, this should be possible with a quick refresh using Cmd+R

Explanation: This is because slack is using electron, which is essentially a wrapper around a browser to create a desktop app. Other "web" commands work like ⌘+[ and ⌘+] to traverse your "browser history" backward and forward, respectively.

Answer 2

Closing and restarting Slack worked for me... But yeah, super annoying!

Answer 3

NOTE: Keep in mind that if you're using a PC keyboard with your Macbook, then this solution can be used.

Press insert on your keyboard. Fixed.

Answer 4

I am using an old Apple keyboard. The 'help' button turns on/off the overwriting function on the computer.

Answer 5

Ctrl+R for you windows users out there.

Answer 6

I was trying to figure this one out too and couldn't find anything that worked. What I did, ultimately: Run the On-Screen Keyboard in Windows and click the INSERT key.

Answer 7

I know this an apple SE, but some of us use Mac and Windows. In my case, using a Windows laptop in a docking station, pressing the Insert key from the external keyboard didn't solve the problem, but pressing the Insert key on the laptop's built-in keyboard solved it.

TL/DR: If you use an external keyboard, try clicking Insert key on the built-in keyboard.

Answer 8

I'm using it on a windows 10 machine in chrome. Control-r doesn't seem to work here. Even though I had closed the chrome browser and shut down the machine, when I brought it back up the next day it was still in overtype mode. I had to close that tab in the browser and then open slack in the browser again to go back into insert mode.