Has Ventura fixed the “not responding” bug?

By Cobbler, 28 October, 2022

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Before installing Ventura I would typically encounter the “AppName not responding” bug multiple times daily.

Since installing Ventura at the start of the week, I've not noticed it once.

Have I simply been lucky? Or has this bug finally been fixed?

Options

Comments

By Trenton Matthews on Wednesday, October 26, 2022 - 18:41

The long bit of if is:

It simply depends on the program in question, that you are using.

By Sebby on Wednesday, October 26, 2022 - 18:41

Apple put in some engineering effort, moving some of the accessibility work onto a separate thread. But, in the end, it doesn't eliminate the bug completely, only reduce it, app and/or website depending.

By Cobbler on Wednesday, October 26, 2022 - 18:41

I should have kept quiet.

30 minutes after posting this question I had about a minute of “Safari not responding” ☹️

So, to answer my own question - possibly better, but not fixed.

By Bruce Harrell on Wednesday, October 26, 2022 - 18:41

I'm still on Monterey. I won't be upgrading any time soon, I suspect. However, it does seem to me the not responding problem has lessened the past month or two. It really isn't a bug, though. I think of it as simply an error in labelling. Whenever I hear it, I translate it in my mind to be "loading".

On the other hand, to the extent the issue is a less than optimal allocation of computer resources, yeah, I could call it a bug, but it's more an error in someone else's judgment than a defect.

Last, if it's a software conflict, then yes, I'd call it a bug, but here's the thing. Who knows what it really is? I sure don't, and whether I know what it is or not, it's here until somebody changes it.

By Chris on Wednesday, October 26, 2022 - 18:41

I'm 99.9% sure this is a VoiceOver issue in most cases. I haven't noticed it as much running Safari 16.1 and macOS Big Sur, so perhaps it's also a problem with Safari itself that's getting better. I'm pretty sure this isn't a mainstream issue, because you'd better believe there would be a massive uproar if Safari was freezing and taking forever to load for sighted users. I'm glad this seems to be much less prevalent in Ventura. I want macOS and VoiceOver to return to the Snow Leopard days.

By Pax on Saturday, November 26, 2022 - 18:41

Hi.
I wasn't abble to navigate by headings in firefox when I installed ventura, so I reverted to monterey.

By PaulMartz on Saturday, November 26, 2022 - 18:41

I noticed the last release of 12.x showed a significant reduction in the Not Responding message, and that reduction continues into Ventura. However, the issue isn't gone completely. I still get the Not Responding message, but vary rarely compared to what we have all seen in the past.

Disclaimer: When I first noticed this issue - back when it was "busy busy busy" - I had enough residual vision that I still used a monitor and could see that Safari was responding just fine if I scrolled or followed links with the mouse. This fact, that Safari was indeed responding even though VoiceOver claimed it wasn't, and VoiceOver was blocking all interaction - that made it a bug in my opinion. Now, with Ventura, in Fall of 2022, my eyesight has declined to the point where I'm no longer using a monitor. Therefore, I can no longer check to see if Safari is usable with a mouse. We need someone with low vision to take a look at this issue, someone who uses VoiceOver but also still can use a monitor and mouse.

In my opinion, is we get the Not Responding message, and Safari is also frozen for sighted users, then it's not a bug. It's just Safari waiting on the web for content.

By Pax on Saturday, November 26, 2022 - 18:41

Someone tried to play threegaia on safari and macOS ventura?
On monterey safari just crapped out and sounds stopped playing.
Please try that and tell me.

By Maldalain on Saturday, November 26, 2022 - 18:41

A giant corporate takes more than two years to fix a problem like this and it has not yet! So weird.

By Pax on Saturday, November 26, 2022 - 18:41

and they create more issues, the speech system now is so broken on Ventura, that ctrl is not stopping speech on any tts based apps.
really cool, right,
adding to that voiceover can't work now with 3rd party browsers.
it's my overall experience using ventura.

By Jason White on Saturday, November 26, 2022 - 18:41

I agree that "not responding" while pages are being loaded or content updated is not a bug.

By PaulMartz on Saturday, November 26, 2022 - 18:41

Okay, I just discovered a way to determine if "not responding" is a bug or not, even if you're totally blind.

When you hear the "not responding" message, press Command+L, type applevis.com, and press enter. If Safari immediately takes you to the AppleVis landing page, then that was a bug. Safari was entirely operational for non-VO commands, and only VO commands generated the "not responding" message.

Just a couple of minutes ago, I had an article open in Safari, in reader view. I was using VO+right arrow to move along a paragraph at a time. Everything was working great until, suddenly, each VO+arrow generated a "not responding" message. I used the above technique to determine that this was VoiceOver that was hung, and not Safari.

By mr grieves on Thursday, January 26, 2023 - 18:41

On my Intel Mac I'm getting so many Not Responding messages, although Safari is probably the worst offender.

I don't agree that it's acceptable to get this when a web page is loading because it renders the whole application unusable. You can't get to the menus or anything else.

I also don't believe that this is the problem. I've got enough sight to be able to see that some blurry activity is going on when it's hung. For example, when I go to Amazon Web Services Console, I can press the keyboard shortcut to search, type in something, see some sort of results appear etc. But all I'm hearing is Safari Not Responding over and over.

It seems that sometimes an app will go into a loop like this permanently, but restarting VoiceOver fixes it. But not always.

Not sure if it's any better on Apple Silicon.

I also get the Not Responding in Mail almost every time I open the context menu on an item. It clears after a few seconds, but it's pretty annoying.