Apple Releases macOS Sonoma 14.4, watchOS 10.4, and tvOS 17.4

Someone mentioned wickipedia, in safari, I'll start reading then out of nowhere, be way at the bottom of the article. Anyone else? very annoying to say the least. Running 14.4 on an m1 Macbook pro

I'm definitely experiencing sluggish Safari + VoiceOver on sizeable websites. You can experience it with this very thread, now that we've passed 50 comments. Navigating page 1 is sluggish. Navigating page 2 is entirely responsive. It's not a lot of sluggishness, maybe a fraction of a second per VO command. But when you're hitting VO+Right multiple times to find some content, it feels like molasses mode.

With VO set to come on at the login screen not working for years, I've given up using it. I power up my Mac, go get a cup of coffee, return, and silently enter my password.

VO focus jumping around, well, not seeing that exactly, though I have seen it in the past with Ventura. I mentioned something similar a few comments back with navigating Google search results.

I've got an issue in Scrivener that I'm still collecting data on. When I hit a specific combination of conditions, VoiceOver seems to stall for several seconds, as if hung. Then, rather suddenly,it comes back to life and appears to very rapidly process all of the keystrokes I hit while it was taking its little cat nap.

I emailed Apple accessibility about a couple of other issues.

Issue #1 is that VO+J in Finder used to jump between the sidebar and list of files. I swear it has worked this way in MacOS going back 10 years. But in Sonoma, VO+J now cycles between the sidebar, the search button, the toolbar, and the list of files. Apple accessibility replied that if there are no linked items, VO+J cycles through window spots. No explanation for why the list of files and the sidebar aren't considered linked items. No explanation for why the behavior suddenly changed. So I emailed them back and expressed some confusion.

Issue #2. With Finder view set to As List, sometimes VoiceOver fails to say anything as you press up and down arrow to navigate the list of files. Command+Tab to some other app and back, and suddenly everything is fine. You can also use Quick Nav arrow keys as a workaround. We're still in discussion on this issue, as clearly Quick Nav should not be required to arrow through the list of files.

Anyhow, these issues all seem fairly minor, and I'm spending the vast majority of my time getting some writing and research completed. I'm a happy 14.4 customer.

I can't reproduce the reported sliggishness in Safari under MacOS 14.4. For reference, I'm using a 2021 MacBook Pro (M1 Pro chip, 10-core CPU).

I notice the sluggishness only occurs while navigating toward the bottom of large websites. So, in this AppleVis thread, go to page 1 which has fifty comments. Press VO+Command+H to move through headings. The first several headings will be quite responsive. But as you navigate through 50+ headings and approach the bottom, you should notice an increasing sluggishness.

I'm on a 2019 Mac Mini.

Paul, Not sure how you can get to that because VO H brings me to help menu and voice over command menu respectively. I did however, go to page 1 and arrow through the headings using the roter and didn't have an issue. So I guess the problem's between the Mac and the couch? By the way, on a mac 2021 M1 chip. weird how this comes up. Only time i get the sluggish one is when I'm impatient, when am I not? Like as in I put in the address and hope it goes fast because I want to read it now. :) Maybe others can have more ideas. Update to this comment, it's VO command or shift, H. And I did this all through page one and didn't have any issues. still, of course this needs attending. Sorry I couldn't reproduce this.

A 2019 Mac Mini is an Intel-based device, so I'm not surprised that there might be performance issues. I expect Apple will continue to optimize code for Apple Silicon hardware; at some point, Intel machines will stop receiving updates, and that will mark the end of the architectural transition.

I didn't even think of performance issues for older Macs. Oops? again, problem between Mac and couch. And i have coffee as well... :)

I'm seeing the problem with focus getting shunted to the top in Spotify, which is a web app (not sure if it is using WebKit or Chromium though)

I usually VO+F, type Connect and jump to the button that allows me to connect to a speaker. I press VO+Space. This opens up a popup and as long as I'm not too quick I can use VO+right to go into the list and choose my speaker. But not any more. Now when I open the popup, the focus gets shunted to the top of the screen. If I jump back to the button I can't then find the popup. But I can if I VO+F for something I know is in the menu.

This wasn't happening before Sonoma 14.4 but I can't say for sure that the Spotify client has updated itself. Given what has been said above I presume this is another stupid little present from the gods of VO sent to test our patience.

Sorry, Siobhan, as you figured out, I mistyped the keyboard shortcut. It's VO+Command+H. I've corrected my original text.

Before we just say, well, Paul, you're on an Intel Mac, I'd like to share some thoughts that are worth considering.

One, we're talking about browsing the web. We've been doing it since the days of the 386. It's not a computationally expensive task.

Two, it's a noted slowdown since prior releases. Something changed in the code.

Three, if the issue is in Webkit, that's cross-platform software that should be well-supported on all hardware.

Four, if you don't notice the slowdown on this discussion, here's an alternate website you can try.

Five, since the problem is more severe when navigating elements toward the bottom, this is indicative of a VoiceOver issue. It's as if, to navigate from element N to element N plus 1, VoiceOver has to, for some reason, iterate over all elements 1 to N minus 1. That's a bug.

I understand the temptation to say this is just an Intel issue. My gut tells me it isn't. So if you folks with the cool new hardware could try the alternate website, I'd love to be able to include the results in my email to Apple. Thanks.

I wasn't aware of this bug but I confirm that the sluggishness is a real thing. I tried this website on my m2 pro 14 inch mac base model with sonoma 14.4 and the more I descend in the page the more slower Voiceover becomes. Maybe because of apple silicon it's not as significant as it might be on intel based systems but it is definitely there. If at the top of that page the delay between pressing vo command h is 2ms before vo respond this increases to 8-9ms at the very bottom of the page.

OK this is weird. So I switched to my Slow Down activity which uses Siri UK voice 1 (well the female one). And I was just navigating about in Spotify and then suddenly it's Jamie. And it's just changed the voice.

I'm pretty sure I didn't do the 45 finger key combination needed to change voices as I was using the num pad commander so nowhere near the cmd, ctrl, option, shift and arrow keys or whatever ludicrous combination is needed to change them on the fly.

So I went into VO Utility and selected the activity, it said I was using Serena Premium, which is my default VO voice. So I changed it to Siri voice 1 and when I press enter from the menu, no it's Jamie.

I remember reading on here about Siri voices disappearing from the iPhone, but this is on the Mac and actually when I was using it. Wtf?

Don't really have time to mess about with it now. Anyone else seen this??

OK so when I came out of the VO Utility it did switch to Siri Voice 1 after all.

Who the hell knows...

It's disappointing that the Siri voice is just not usable for day to day work. For example, typing in here is just so pathetically slow. I've mentioned it before somewhere else but it is just crazy. If it wasn't for its inability to read single characters without sounding like it's been on an all-weekend bender then it would be quite good. Providing it could actually stay on the same voice of course.

Firstly, for those experiencing the issue with the mouse within menu controls, did my suggestion above help anyone? Secondly, with all of these reported issues with Sonoma, is it even feasible as a resource for productivity in an educational environment?
Because, Sonoma is reminding me of when OS X Yosemite first launched. Does anyone remember how botched that build was originally? 🫤

Finally, are there any known workarounds for some, if not all, of these recently discovered issues?

I reported the Safari sluggishness and Apple accessibility quickly responded that they had reproduced it and passed it on.

One of the other issues I mentioned was VoiceOver not reading file names in Finder under certain conditions. I'm seeing other similar behavior in many other situations, places where the UI works fine (according to my sighted spouse) but VoiceOver says nothing.

* I've got a website with popup menus and VoiceOver refuses to read the menu entries. The entries are present, and I can get to them using the VO+U web rotor.
* Press VO+M to go to the menubar and everything is fine. But press Control+F2 to go to the menubar, and VoiceOver doesn't announce anything until you open a menu.
* And there's the problem I noted with Scrivener, where VoiceOver goes silent for maybe 5 or 10 seconds, then rapidly announces all the keys I had been pressing to no effect.

Nothing is really a showstopper. But the time I'm spending marveling at the seemingly pointless changes in behavior, trying to find workarounds, and reporting issues is totally killing my productivity. That's why I waited until now to upgrade.

Since obtaining my Ryzen-based laptop for my Certs programs, I have removed Bootcamp Windows from my old MBP, wiped the SSD completely, and reinstalled macOS 12.7.4 (Monterey). I do not think I will touch Software Update again until 2025, when/if some of the kinks of macOS 15 have been worked out. As it stands now, Monterey is running like my MBP was made for it, so I am happy enough with a stable, albeit dated, Mac. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Then again, maybe macOS 14.5 will see better days.

Has anyone else noticed voiceover randomly deciding not to turn on at the login screen?
I find I often need to reenable this setting every so often which is pretty irritating.
Also, I wanted to thank mr grieves for changing the mouse pointer settings in macos.
That menu issue was going to be the death of me.

If you're talking about going into System Settings, Lock Screen, Accessibility, and turning on VoiceOver at the lock screen, that setting has been ignored or dysfunctional for as long as I can remember. I leave it off, and usually just enter my password without VoiceOver. Or, if I want it, manually turn it on with Command+F5.

I never had much of a problem with the login screen on my Intel iMac running Ventura, but once I started using an M2 Macbook the login screen was all over the place from Ventura onwards. This was about the only Ventura bug that I noticed Applevis listed as fixed (well ok unless you count SNR but let's not go there). And I think maybe for 14.1 it wasn't too bad but it seems just as broken as always now.

I've noticed it is slightly worse with a bluetooth keyboard. When it is working, Daniel prattles on for hours about how characters won't be shown in the password box. I can interrupt this sooner using the laptop keyboard than my MX keys. But usually the focus is god knows where. Sometimes I can move it into the password box. Sometimes I can't. Sometimes I get stuck in some kind of hidden wifi screen (or wee-fee as Daniel says).

I've not confirmed this but I think if you have to turn VO on and off again (which I do most days) then it will turn it off in system settings for the lock screen.

And there's also the problem of not being able to use numpad commander with the password box, which you get used to I suppose but is still irritating.

It feels that logging in from a reboot should be about as simple as things get. No other apps running, nothing else to do. And yet still all sorts of problems.

All caught up.

There's no such thing as a Mac Mini 2019, as it turns out. Before the Apple Silicon Mini appeared in 2020, the latest Intel Mac Mini was from late 2018. I have this. It's fine, as it goes.

Menus. I just learned to live with the new behaviour. For some reason I can't make Control-F2 work to open them, but VO-M always works, now with added automatic menu opening. Sure I can fix it, I just don't want to give up the not infrequent utility of mouse tracking. Or so I seem to find, anyroad.

And then at last there's the poor, poor Terminal. It's painful to work over a screen share on my Ventura Mini server where everything works perfectly—well, as perfectly as one can reasonably expect nowadays. It's just broken on Sonoma. Sigh.

Concerning various and sundry other issues on the login screen, I can only say that I hear you. My favourite is that when the FileVault screen appears, it takes a good few seconds of Samantha whittering on before I can even begin to type on my MBP's internal keyboard. Again, sigh. What can you do, really?

@Sebbi are you able to stop Samantha from talking by pressing the Control key? This works for me to stop speech on the login screen on my M2 MacBook Air with Filevault enabled.

Thanks, Sebby! I *do* have a 2018 Mac Mini. Now if you could just make me a year younger ... .

I turned VoiceOver off in System Settings, Lock Screen, Accessibility, then restarted (a.k.a. rebooted in computer parlance). Then I turned this setting back on and restarted again. Wow! It worked flawlessly, VoiceOver on at the login prompt just as I would expect.

Then I restarted one more time, and here's where things went wrong. VoiceOver came on at the login prompt, but it announced "Installer progress." And, no, it was not installing anything. It was a normal login screen as confirmed by Be My AI. VoiceOver wouldn't let me bring focus to the password field, though. It complained "installer progress has no windows."

At that point, I Command+F5 turned VoiceOver off, typed my password, and pressed enter, and that logged me in.

This is maybe not new at all, but I could swear this has never been the case before....

Take these two sentences:

I don't know how to read.
Have you read that book?

VoiceOver is pronouncing read as reed in the first sentence and red in the second.

And similarly with live:

What a world we live in
Careful that wire is live

So now live in the two sentence is pronounced differently.

Maybe it's been doing this for ages and I've just never noticed. Can someone with a better memory than me confirm?