Voice Over reading two clocks in status menus

By Mara, 20 May, 2022

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Hello all-
i have noticed the past few days that when pressing VO Mm to enter the status menus on mac that voiceover is reading 2 clocks. one is at the left end and one at the right end. the one on the right is a regular clock while the one on the left visually looks like an empty box.
How do I get rid of the clock on the left? or is this a monterey bug?
thanks for any help.

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Comments

By Squirrel on Saturday, May 28, 2022 - 02:32

I'm not seeing this here on the latest Monterey release.

Is it possible that this is a menu item for an application? Anything installed or updated recently which might have added this? What happens when you activate the context menu on this item?

Have you restarted your Mac since this appeared? If not, give it a try... just in case ☺️

By Mara on Saturday, May 28, 2022 - 02:32

the only thing I have done is update to the latest version of Monterey, 12.4. so I restarted as you suggested and the two clocks are still there. strange.

By Chris on Saturday, May 28, 2022 - 02:32

This is strange. What does VoiceOver identify the other icon as?

By Mara on Saturday, May 28, 2022 - 02:32

hey, yeah, passing strange. I never saw it before - on any other device.
VoiceOver reads the date and time at both ends of the status menus. does that make sense? so today is Friday may 20 10:30pm. That's what it wil say at both ends the status menus.

By Manuel on Saturday, May 28, 2022 - 02:32

With macOS 12.4, apple has added dynamic date and time. This also is the default setting after updating to macOs 12.4. To change this and only show the date and time once, do the following:
1. Open system preferences
2. Head over to Dock & Menu Bar and select the clock in the table (unfortunately, VO is only saying empty object in this table). Therefore, you have to select the item in the table, stop interaction, and then check whether clock is selected.
3. Select the popup menu and select the option "always" in there

The issue should now be fixed.

By Mara on Saturday, May 28, 2022 - 02:32

Thanks so much to @hexagon!
The issue is now fixed. hopefully it will help somebody else.