While the keyboard remains the fastest and most efficient way to enter text on a computer, some rarely used keys still remain mysterious to many.
With the advent of touch screens and the triumph of smartphones, good old computer keyboards seem more and more anachronistic to some. Faced with their multitude of keys with sometimes cryptic names and symbols, we can feel a little lost and wonder if we are not going to trigger a disaster by pressing them.
Moreover, this is a bit like what happens when you inadvertently press one of them, often located not far from the key. Backspacewhich we use regularly when typing text on the computer. This key, which we still find on many keyboards of ours, and which we never pay attention to, except when it disrupts our writing, is the famous Insert, Insert or even Ins.
His role? It allows you to switch between two text entry modes on the keyboard: “insert” mode, the default on today’s computers, and “retype” mode, also called “replacement”. As its name suggests, the “insertion” mode allows you to add characters after the cursor position, while shifting the existing text to the right or left, depending on the chosen writing direction. This is the default text entry mode on all contemporary computers, and the one to which we are accustomed.
The other text entry mode, “retype” or “replace” therefore, works in a slightly different way, since it allows you to write new characters after the position of the cursor, gradually replacing the text already present. In this mode, each new character entered takes the place of the one directly to the right to the left of the cursor, depending on the writing direction used.
This text entry mode appeared on electronic typewriters, to allow words to be changed or corrected before printing the line being written. Nowadays, with modern computers and word processors, this input method can seem disconcerting and somewhat outdated, since it is very easy to select a portion of text with the mouse to modify it.
This is why the default text entry mode on most systems is now “insert”, and the key Ins has even disappeared from Apple keyboards. However, this typing mode remains popular with certain users, notably developers for writing computer code, and administrators for using command line software.
However, in the context of more common use of a computer keyboard, there is a good chance that the “retype” mode will be more annoying than anything else when it is triggered. So, if you have inadvertently switched to this input mode, just know that you just have to press the Insert, Inser or Ins key keyboard to return to normal.
On Windows, there is unfortunately no native option in the settings to completely disable this key. Some laptop or peripheral manufacturers offer to make the key Ins inactive via their in-house applications, such as Logi+ at Logitech. And as a last resort, you can follow our dedicated step-by-step, linked earlier in this article, to permanently disable the switch between “insert” and “retype” mode on the keyboard.