Hey all, I have a really annoying problem going on over here with my new macbook air 13 inch 2020 system, and was hoping maybe that one of you might know whatg's changed, as I'm still very very new to Big Sur, and have only been using it for a short time. I'm more familiar with Catalina, but undoubtedly Apple's changed things a bit, or God forbid, really indeed has broken something epicly.
It used to be, I could hit VO+D to focus my dock, then would VO+right arrow to an icon of my choice. Then, I could access the context menu with VO+shift+M, and go to options, and finally, remove from dock. Now however, if I hit VO+Shift+M on any icon at all in the dock, doesn't matter which one as this is 100% consistent, I'm immediately thrown out of the dock entirely, and put back in whatever app last had focused such as the desktop in my Finder.
I tried the new actions command with VO+shift+space, and did see an option to access menu, which you'd think would bring up that context menu, but it doesn't seem to be doing so. Again, it just dismisses the dock, and lands me back wherever.
The only sollution I've gotten to work 100% of the time totally consistently is, even though I'm set for mouse pointer following Voiceover cursor, and even though cursor tracking with VO+shift+F3 is enabled, I still have to do this, but I can route my mouse pointer with command+VO+F5, then control+literally click my trackpad. I don't mean VO+shift+space by literally clicking. I'm literally having to route, then hold down control and physically click the trackpad.
This system does indeed support the 3D force touch on the trackpad, so after VOIng to the icon of choice, I tried that both with first routing, and without doing so, but that's not working either either way.
So, the trillion and one dollar question: how the heck do you now remove things from the dock, short of literally control clicking on the item to get the dad gum context menu to pop up?
Thank you for any help! Apple Accessibility was clueless when I asked them about this.
Comments
How to remove from the Doc in Big Sur.
This is a little interesting, but what you do is once you hit VO Shift M on the item, go down to options, VO right, and down to "Remove From Doc" Command Tab until you get to your desktop and quickly hit enter.
But, that's just it. I can't.
I think you're partly misunderstanding the issue.
That was my entire point. I can't hit vo+shift+m on the item. As soon as I do, you're exactly correct; normally, I should then be able to go down to options, vo+right arrow, then go to remove from dock.
The issue is, when I am on the item in the dock I want to remove, and I hit vo+shift+m, the dock disappears, and I'm thrown focus back to the app which was in the foreground prior to me bringing up the dock with vo+d. Therefore, I can't get to the stupid context menu necessary in the first place to get the options sub menu/remove from dock ability. Does that make more sense?
Yes.
Ah, I see. I do experience this as well, and basically, I have to keep doing it until it works. I find it rather frustrating and I really hope that Apple fixes the whole removing from Doc issue.
Right mouse click
I assigned the Numpad commander minus key to do a right mouse click. I can reliably open the dock menu with the following steps.
1. Go to dock, Control+F3.
2. Move to item, right or left arrow.
3. Bring mouse pointer to item, VO+Command+F5.
4. Open menu, Numpad-Minus.
Then arrow to options, right arrow to open submenu, and select Remove From Dock.
This is just one of many tasks that have become more tedious under Big Sur.
Doing pretty much the same thing.
Yeah, you're pretty much doing identically the same exact thing I'm already doing by routing the mouse, then control clicking my trackpad.
Remember, control clicking is the exact same as right clicking in the mac world.
Sometimes it just works
(Aside: After focus is on the dock, you can jump to an item quickly with first letter navigation.)
Once you've got focus on the item, sometimes you can open the menu with a simple up arrow, but it's as unreliable as VO+Shift+M.