00 Votes

What is the key INS on the keyboard for?

Question by Mopsi99 | 2018-01-07 at 17:34

It's always amazing what keys you can discover on your keyboard that you have never used in your life. One of them is certainly the INS key. I always thought it's made for "inserting" text.

The problem: I just tried it and copied a little text into the clipboard. Unfortunately, the INSERT key does not paste anything from the clipboard.

Why is this key needed and what is inserted here?

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2Best Answer2 Votes

With pressing the INS key, you can toggle between Overwrite and Insert writing mode.

Default is the "insert" mode. That is, if you place the cursor somewhere in the text, a new keyboard input is inserted.

If you then press the "INS" key, you change/switch to the "overwrite" mode. If you place the mouse pointer somewhere in the text in this mode and enter something, the following text will be overwritten by the new text. Letter by letter.

The whole thing is a relic from the beginnings of computer science, today nearly nobody actually uses this key anymore - and if, then involuntarily. At least I sometimes get on the key and then wonder why suddenly the text that I have just written disappears.
2018-01-08 at 12:11

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11 Vote

Theoretically, you can indeed use the INS key to paste text from the clipboard. Simply press the Shift key at the same time, that should make this function possible.
2018-01-09 at 09:05

ReplyPositive Negative
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