Apple has today released macOS 14 Sonoma to the public. As usual, we won’t cover the mainstream features here, concentrating instead on what's new and changed for blind and low vision users. For an overview of the mainstream changes, we recommend this in-depth review by MacStories.
Please remember to check the section about bugs to see if now is the right time to upgrade. There’s no harm in holding off a few weeks or months to let Apple address a problem you may find too disruptive to deal with.
A note to braille users: the AppleVis team members doing testing with macOS Sonoma are not heavy braille users. We have no information as to how well braille works in this release, so please keep this in mind when upgrading. If you are a braille user who has experience with Sonoma, please share your findings in the comments to help the community.
Changes for Blind and Low Vision Users
Last year Apple brought new voices, information commands, and word processing improvements to macOS Ventura. This year, macOS Sonoma brings some more changes and a handful of bug fixes.
Independent Single-key Quick Nav
In previous versions of macOS, in order to use single-key Quick Nav to navigate webpages, arrow-key Quick Nav would've had to be on, which could frustrate users and detract from the usability and discoverability of this feature. In macOS Sonoma, single-key Quick Nav can be used regardless of whether arrow-key Quick Nav is on or off. Just open VoiceOver Utility > Commanders > Quick Nav, and select the "Enable single-key Quick Nav" checkbox, or Press VO-Q to toggle this setting from anywhere in macOS.
Per Voice Settings
As on iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, macOS Sonoma allows you to change a variety of settings for individual voices. The specific parameters configurable for each voice mirror those available on iOS and iPadOS, such as the ability to modify sentence pause and timbre of Vocalizer voices, the ability to adjust Alex's pitch range and WPM minimum and maximum, and the extensive range of customizations available for Eloquence voices, such as head size, pitch range, breathiness, and roughness. In addition, Eloquence voices now include the option to use a higher sample rate, phrase prediction, and the Community Dictionary to augment pronunciation.
To access these settings for VoiceOver voices, open VoiceOver Utility > Speech > Voices, choose "Manage voices" from the voice popup menu, interact with a voice in the list, and click the Info button. The same settings for Spoken Content can be accessed by going to System Settings > Accessibility > Spoken Content, choosing "Manage voices" from the voice popup menu, interacting with a voice in the list, and clicking the Info button. Like on iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, you can preview any changes you make, and reset a voice to its default parameters if you wish.
Braille Improvements
While it is not something we have been able to test, we are aware of the following improvements for braille users in macOS Sonoma:
- Mathematical equations can now be written and displayed using Nemeth code. This setting can be found in VoiceOver Utility > Braille > Translation.
- You can now use a two-dimensional (2D) braille display with your Mac to experience supported graphical content by touch.
Custom Indentation Levels
Last year with the release of macOS Ventura, Apple added the option for VoiceOver to report indentation levels. In macOS Sonoma, you can now customize the number of spaces or tabs that constitutes a level. This setting can be found in VoiceOver Utility > Verbosity > Text.
Siri Voice Improvements
Like on iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, improvements to how Siri voices respond with VoiceOver have been made, particularly when using higher speech rates. Your individual experiences and results with these voices may vary.
Improvements for Low Vision Users
While it is not something we have been able to test, we are aware of the following improvements for low vision users:
- There is now an option to change the text size for supported macOS apps. This setting can be found in System Settings > Accessibility > Display.
- If you use multiple displays with your Mac, you can change the Zoom level for each display in System Settings > Accessibility > Zoom.
- Auto-playing animated images can be turned off in System Settings > Accessibility > Display. This may be useful for those who are sensitive to rapidly changing content.
If you are a low vision Mac user, we would love to hear in the comments your experience and thoughts on these and any additional enhancements you encounter in macOS Sonoma.
Other Changes
- You can now pair Made for iPhone (MFI) hearing devices with your Mac. This feature is limited to the MacBook Pro (2021), Mac Studio (2022), and all Macs with the M2 and later chips.
- Like on iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, you can use Live Speech on macOS Sonoma to type content that will then be spoken by a voice of your choosing. To use this feature, first turn it on by going to System Settings > Accessibility > Live Speech, and toggling it on. Then whenever you want to use it, click "Live Speech" in the status menu, type what you want spoken or select from a list of saved phrases, and click speak. In addition, you can use Personal Voice to create a clone of your voice that you can then use instead of a synthetic voice.
- macOS Sonoma includes the same predictive text model as iOS 17 and iPadOS 17. As you type, VoiceOver will speak text predictions which can be inserted by pressing the Space Bar. However, while these predictions can be helpful for completing words and simple sentences, some users may find VoiceOver's speaking of text predictions as they're trying to type distracting. To turn this feature off, go to System Settings > Keyboard, click the Edit button under the "Text input" heading, and turn the "show inline predictive text" switch off.
Change List
In it's support documentation, Apple lists the following changes for VoiceOver and braille users in macOS Sonoma:
- Automatically switch between customized groups of VoiceOver settings based on the context of what you’re currently doing in an app.
- When you have VoiceOver indicate the amount of leading indentation, you can customize the number of spaces per indent. This can be useful when reading and writing programming code.
- When you use Siri voices with VoiceOver, they sound more natural and expressive when speaking quickly.
- VoiceOver no longer differentiates between window spots and web spots. You can use window spots to quickly navigate both app windows and webpages.
- VoiceOver offers improvements to Quick Nav, which lets you navigate using only the arrow keys, or using single keys (instead of key combinations).
- You can connect supported two-dimensional refreshable braille displays with your Mac.
- VoiceOver can use Nemeth Code to represent mathematical equations in braille.
- You can assign keyboard function keys (F1, F2, and so on) to keys on your braille display.
Bug Fixes and New Bugs for VoiceOver Users
Below are lists of the bugs we believe to have been resolved in macOS Sonoma, as well as new bugs introduced in this release. Of note, at the time of posting, we are unaware of any new bugs which we would rate as serious. However, such ratings are subjective, and thus we strongly recommend that you read through the list of new bugs and any replies before updating; as this will allow you to make an informed decision on whether to install macOS Sonoma or wait for a future release.
With our small team, it's impossible to test every Mac model, configuration, application, and use case. We can't claim our bug list is comprehensive or that our assessments are infallible. Some issues may manifest only under specific conditions - you likely won't experience every bug. Also, expect to encounter problems not listed that we missed in our testing.
To ensure the information here is as complete and accurate as possible, we welcome feedback below from those who have installed macOS Sonoma. Please confirm if you're encountering the same problems listed or if you've found workarounds. Also let us know about any additional issues not mentioned here. Of course, it's even more important that you report any new bugs directly to Apple - they're already aware of the ones listed here. For an explanation of why and how to report bugs to Apple, see this post.
Accessibility Bugs Resolved in macOS Sonoma
We know there will be considerable interest in whether the longstanding “Safari not responding” bug has been addressed in macOS Sonoma. Our own experience and reports from elsewhere during the beta testing period suggest users who have experienced this issue under macOS Ventura should not expect improvement under macOS Sonoma.
Our testing indicates that Apple has, however, resolved the following bugs in macOS Sonoma:
- It is once again possible to activate links on App Store search pages using VoiceOver.
- Clicking the "Learn more" button in System Settings > General > Software update > Beta updates now loads the Apple Beta Program website as expected.
- Pressing the Return key now works to select suggestions in Reminders.
We can't confirm this from our own testing as it wasn't an issue our testers have experienced in the past, but user reports indicate that macOS Sonoma has resolved a VoiceOver bug on the login screen. For some users, VoiceOver would previously erroneously announce an “installer” window while failing to recognize the actual login elements. This issue has reportedly been fixed in macOS Sonoma with the login process now fully accessible and working as expected.
New Bugs for VoiceOver Users in macOS Sonoma
Our testing suggests that the following bugs have been introduced in macOS Sonoma:
- After clicking a link to a webpage, the link will be activated as expected, however VoiceOver focus will then be moved to a random location in the active window. This is most reliably demonstrated when clicking a URL in Mail, where focus moves to the newly opened webpage as expected, however when returning to Mail, VoiceOver focus will not be on the link you clicked, requiring you to manually locate the link in order to continue reading the message where you left off.
- It is not possible to type in some text fields, like Safari’s smart search field or VoiceOver's Find field, with single-key Quick Nav on, as VoiceOver interprets key presses as navigation commands. This issue occurs even when focus is automatically placed on a text field, such as when opening a window or app, as well as when locating a text field using the Tab key. In order to type, you must turn single-key Quick Nav off.
- When playing a video on youtube.com in Safari, clicking the “Skip navigation” button does not move VoiceOver focus to the “complimentary” landmark as expected. Note that navigating to this landmark via the rotor still works.
- In the “Edit widgets” interface in Notification Center, widget suggestions are labeled with their functions, however these labels do not include their parent apps. For example, the widget that shows the battery level of connected devices is labeled "Status" instead of "battery status," and the widget that shows the price of a given ticker symbol is labeled "symbol" instead of something like "Stocks, symbol." Interacting with the suggestion may give you additional context as to the precise function of the widget.
- In Safari’s “Add to dock” dialog, as well as the settings window for a web app, the button to choose a custom icon lacks an accessibility label.
macOS Sonoma Release Notes
macOS Sonoma brings all-new capabilities that elevate your productivity and creativity. Discover even more ways to personalize your Mac with stunning screensavers and widgets that you can add to your desktop. Elevate your presence on video calls with a new way to present your work that keeps you a part of the presentation. Safari profiles and web apps help you organize your browsing in all-new ways. Game Mode boosts your gaming performance. Sonoma also brings big updates to Messages, Keyboard, and Accessibility. And when you upgrade, you get the latest security and privacy protections available for Mac.
Screen Savers
- Stunning screen savers of locations from around the world seamlessly become your desktop wallpaper when you log-in
- Shuffle settings for rotating through screensavers by theme including Landscape, Cityscape, Underwater, and Earth
Widgets
- Widgets can be placed anywhere on the desktop and adapt to the color of your wallpaper while working in apps
- iPhone widgets can be added to your Mac when your iPhone is nearby or on the same Wi-Fi network
- Interactive widgets let you take actions directly from the widget such as running a shortcut, pausing media, and more
Video Conferencing
- Presenter Overlay keeps you front and center while sharing your screen in FaceTime or third-party video conferencing apps (Mac with Apple silicon)
- Reactions layer 3D effects like hearts, balloons, confetti, and more around you in video calls and can be triggered with gestures (Mac with Apple silicon, Continuity Camera with iPhone 12 and later)
Safari and Passwords
- Profiles keep your browsing separate for topics like work and personal, separating your history, cookies, extensions, Tab Groups, and favorites
- Web apps let you use any website like an app, complete with an icon in the Dock for faster access and a simplified toolbar for easier browsing
- Enhanced Private Browsing locks your private browsing windows when you're not using them, blocks known trackers from loading, and removes tracking that identifies you from URLs
- Password and passkey sharing allows you to easily share accounts with trusted contacts
Messages
- Live Stickers sync from iOS and iPadOS to macOS, giving you access to the Live Stickers you create on your iPhone and iPad
- Search filters for people, keywords, and content types like photos or links help you more easily find what you are looking for
- Swipe to reply inline on any iMessage bubble
Gaming
- Game Mode gives games the highest priority on the CPU and GPU, delivering more consistent frame rates and lower latency to wireless controllers and AirPods (Mac with Apple silicon)
Keyboard
- Improved autocorrect accuracy makes typing even easier by leveraging a more powerful transformer-based language model
- Inline predictive text shows single- and multi-word predictions that you can add by pressing the Space bar
- Improved Dictation experience supports using your voice and keyboard together to enter and edit text
AirPods
- Adaptive Audio delivers a new listening mode that dynamically blends Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency to tailor the noise control experience based on the conditions of your environment (AirPods Pro (2nd generation) with the latest firmware)
- Personalized Volume adjusts the volume of your media in response to your environment and listening preferences over time (AirPods Pro (2nd generation) with the latest firmware)
- Conversation Awareness lowers your media volume and enhances the voices of the people in front of the user, all while reducing background noise (AirPods Pro (2nd generation) with the latest firmware)
- Press to mute and unmute your microphone by pressing the AirPods stem or the Digital Crown on AirPods Max when on a call (AirPods (3rd generation), AirPods Pro (1st and 2nd generation), or AirPods Max with the latest firmware)
- Improved AirPods automatic switching now detects Mac up to 2X faster (AirPods (2nd and 3rd generation), AirPods Pro (1st and 2nd generation), AirPods Max with the latest firmware)
Privacy
- Sensitive Content Warnings can be enabled to help prevent users from unexpectedly viewing sensitive images in Messages
- Expanded Communication Safety protections for children now detect videos containing nudity in addition to photos shared through Messages and the system Photos picker
- Improved sharing permissions let you choose which photos to share and add calendar events without providing access to your entire photo library or calendar
Accessibility
- Live Speech lets you type what you want to say and reads it aloud in FaceTime calls or in-person conversations
- Personal Voice helps users at risk of speech loss create a voice that sounds like them in a private and secure way using on-device machine learning
- Made for iPhone compatible hearing devices can be paired and used with Mac (MacBook Pro (2021), Mac Studio (2022), and Mac computers with M2 chip)
This release also includes other features and improvements:
- One-Time verification code AutoFill from Mail helps you quickly sign into sites in Safari, without leaving the browser
- Inline PDFs and document scans in Notes are presented full-width making them easy to view
- Grocery Lists in Reminders automatically group related items into sections as you add them
- Visual Look Up for recipes helps you find similar dishes from photo
- Visual Look Up in video helps you learn about objects that appear in paused video frames
- Pets in the People album in Photos surfaces individual pets just like friends or family members
- Option to say "Siri" in addition to "Hey Siri" for a more natural way to activate Siri (Mac with Apple silicon, AirPods Pro (2nd generation))
- High performance mode in Screen Sharing supports color workflows and improves responsiveness while remotely accessing a Mac (Mac with Apple silicon)
- Item sharing in Find My allows you to share an AirTag with up to five other people
- Activity History in Home displays a recent history of events for door locks, garage doors, security systems, and contact sensors
- Battery health management updated on 13-inch MacBook Air with M2 chip to better optimize long term battery health
Some features may not be available for all regions or on all Apple devices.
To learn more about macOS Sonoma, please visit: https://www.apple.com/macOS/Sonoma
For information on the security content of Apple software updates, please visit this website: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT201222
In Closing
macOS Sonoma is a solid update that adds a few new features and enhancements for blind and low vision users. We encountered no show-stopping bugs in this version of macOS. Our recommendation is to update when you're ready. You may want to give developers time to update their apps and others opportunity to find the bugs or other problems we missed, but we believe most users should be okay to update now.
We'd love to hear your thoughts after you've had a chance to install the update. What new features do you find most useful? Are there any changes you don't like? Please share your feedback in the comments below. Let us know what Apple got right with this release and where you think there's still room for improvement.
In closing, we thank Apple's Accessibility team for their prompt response in fixing many of the bugs reported during the macOS Sonoma beta cycle. However, some problems remain unresolved. We encourage Apple to promptly address the outstanding accessibility issues discussed in this post and the comments below so that macOS can be as accessible, usable, and enjoyable as possible for all users.
To install macOS Sonoma, choose System Settings from the Apple menu, select General in the table, click Software Update in the scroll area, and click the Update Now button to begin the update process. If other updates are available, you can click "More info" to see details about them and select specific updates to install.
More information on how to update the software on your Mac is available on this Apple Support page.
Comments
the update is in-progress wile writing this.
we will have bugs, regardless of this update or any other. note, I wasn't criticizing Apple, because every software has bugs, and it is up to us if the Mac should be updated
safari not responding
I understand that there will always be some bugs, however this safari issue definitely needs to be addressed.
Updated about a week ago
I ran the update, checked just now, so I guess i'm running the final release. A few behaviors persist. One, the double speaking of letters when I backspace like on this site never got fixed. Second, the predictive text is off yet behavior still happens in mail when I know I'll fix the typo in a second or I wasn't done yet anyway. I know you can speed up Siri on the phone, can it be done on Mac and watch OS? asking in general, i know this is about Sonoma
Safari
I completely agree. This Safari not responding behavior is absolutely unacceptable! It's just as bad as that ridiculous mouse issue in Monterey.
VoiceOver Change List
I apologize for the double post, but here's Apple's official change list for Sonoma.
https://support.apple.com/guide/voiceover/whats-new-in-voiceover-vo15627/mac#:~:text=VoiceOver%20now%20supports%20over%2020,)%2C%20Spanish%20(Chile)%2C
Onedrive and status bar
If your microsoft onedrive is running, and you will try to go to the status bar, voiceover's focus unexpectedly jumps in to onedrive. And you cannot scroll inside status bar for example to change wifi settings. You need to quit onedrive in order to use status bar as exspected.
Safari not Responding is soved in my Mac
although some people are reporting that the Safari not Responding issue persists on their Macs, in my particular case, the problem was solved after installing Sonoma. I even installed Ventura 13.6 this morning to see if the problem was only with v 13.5.2, which is the version that re introduced the probem in my Mac, but it was the same. I installed Sonoma 2 hours ago, and haven't heard the Safari is not responding message.
The only annoying issue I'm having in Safari is that Voiceover is not returning the focus to a link which I used to launch to another page, after getting back to the original page.
this is really amazing: 1. I…
this is really amazing:
1. I confirm the stupid bug with OneDrive;
2. I confirm the stupid link bug;
3. In Numbers, VoiceOver still does not read Minus (-) (-234) before a negative number;
4. In Polish synthesizers it does not read currency numbers after the dot 4.8888 eur, 6.5622 $;
5. When moving quickly through the text, you can hear crackling sounds on the synthesizers. There is a tragedy in Polish lang;
Issue with Capslock
My Capslock key wants to activate whenever I'm in an edit field. I disabled predictive text but that did not help.
Meh I'll wait.
I've been beta testing the beta on a seperate apfs volume than my main volume and... at the moment there are quite a few things stopping me from upgrading, with one being the single quicknav bug... its, frankly, annoying as all hell, and I rather wait until its fixed. Second, and more importantly, however, and I'd like to know if others have experiensed this,
I have vmware fusion and a vertual machine of windows 10. On mac os ventura it works perfectly but, for some reason under mac os sonoma it just... doesn't at all. Whenever I press startup, to start the vm... it looks for a second as if the machine will start, meaning the startup, button changes into, suspend, button, however one second later, it reverts back to startup, and the vm doesn't start at all. Not sure if its my specic vm, I mean its kinda old, or if its a vmware bfusion thing, but will have to keep testing this, as I use my vm practically daily, from things like working in word etc, to other stuff.
So i'll hold off on the upgrade... in any case no biggy since I can just boot into the other mac volume containing the beta and test things out, but I rather wait.
However not counting the vm ishue... I'll wait until the single key quicknav bug is fixed, because... My god that bug drives me up the wall! Once that bug gets squashed though... I mean great that voiceover finally has the two quicknav separated, although I do hope that bug gets fixed pretty quickly.
Regarding VM's
You probably need to wait for the next fusion release, if I remember right they usually come a little after the latest MacOS ships. You could try the tech preview and see if that akes a difference.
Widgets
Hi, just installed the update and how do I add a widget to my desktop? I don't know if this is a bug or not, I cannot seem to type in edit fields unless I turn off single quicknav.
If i'm not mistaken
I think it's a known bug that if you have single key quick nav on, you can't type in edit fields, yet for me, that would kind of make sense. I mean if you are using H to go by headings, how do you write, Heading, when you have single quick nav on?
Single-key QuickNav
I agree, this arguably isn't a bug at all. It's the user's responsibility to turn single-key QuickNav on and off. This includes turning it off in order to type into a text field.
I appreciate that some people would like the feature to act differently, but that's a design issue and a feature request, not a bug. I think a case can be made on both sides, and I suspect Apple's UI designers have already made a choice about how it should work.
RE: Single key quick nav
I completey agree the the single key quick nav is not a bug. But I aso think Apple could improve this feature if Voiceover could analyze the position of the Voiceover / keyboard focus and then determining when the focus is not on a Text or similar box, to use the typed letter as quick nav, and if the focus is on a text box, then just to insert the text in the box.
JAWS and NVDA have always…
JAWS and NVDA have always allowed for quick one-key navigation, and you can type normally in the edit fields.
Form fields
As I remember, in Jaws or NVDA, you have to open the form fields with enter to tipe something.
Not a Bug
As far as I can tell, this isn't a bug. I don't personally have access to anything newer than Big Sur, but you have to interact with text fields to type in them, just like you have to make a text field editable on iOS before you can type. I highly suspect this isn't a bug as others have said, but a design choice which I agree with. If you don't want to deal with that, turn it off and use the standard VoiceOver navigation commands that have been around since Leopard.
Does this also allow you to find elements in an application using single letters? This doesn't work in Big Sur, but it would be very cool to press t to navigate to tables in programs such as VoiceOver Utility instead of VO Command t.
Maybe VoiceOver needs an…
Maybe VoiceOver needs an auto forms mode setting like JAWS has had for years now. I can't remember when they introduced it, but I remember when people were talking about how it would be neat to be able to do that in the future and then it happened. They refined it later so you could set a delay when you landed on an edit field before the auto forms mode would kick in. I had mine set to around a second iirc. Something like that would be cool for VO.
I haven't had a Mac in years now, but I like the idea of single key quick nav being seperate from the arrow key quick nav. Is this also on iOS?
I'd love to update
There are a lot of cool new features that I'd love to try, but I simply can't take roughly a week out of my life right now to upgrade, explore, and work around and report any new issues. The issues listed in this forum topic don't appear all that intimidating, but I fear the unknown issues that no one is reporting yet. I'll hold off on the upgrade for the time being.
As Carlos M Contreras said, macOS should be smart enough to disable single key quick nav based on the element with focus. iOS has been able to do this for years. I'm unsure what technical barrier is preventing macOS from following suit.
tradeoff in web apps
Let's say I'm in gMail and want to compose a message. Normally I hit C, I don't want that jumping me to the next combo box on the page. It's not just about typing in edit boxes, if you have a ffeature like single letter quick nav you really need to know how to toggle it to make the most of web apps and their native keyboard shortcuts.
Unfortunately, quick…
Unfortunately, quick navigation only works in browsers and probably in e-mails.
I think it's stupid and limiting.
E.g. Pages, Notes, PDF files do not support this.
Just Updated...
Hello everyone. I'm a bit late again to the party. I'm spending the night at my parents' place because I have a consultation with a periodontist in the morning. But anyway, I just updated and immediately noticed that Samantha is now in use on my Mac. I wonder if she's the new default voice. Also, this new QuickNav scheme is going to take a bit of getting used to but I'll get the hang of it very soon. In addition, I've no doubt I'll be exploring Sonoma in more detail in the coming weeks. But so far so good on my end. I'm honestly a bit surprised at how fast this thing updated, given the sluggishness of the wi-fi up here. All righty then...it's off to bed I go. Been kinda a busy few days here and I've got another busy one tomorrow. Cheers for now!
This doesn't sound too bad...
The iOS and WatchOS new versions sound terrible, but this sounds like it might be worth installing. The email link thing sounds annoying but it also doesn't sound like a particularly big deal given the number of existing focus bugs on the Mac.
I don't think I've ever been less excited by a major new Mac release and after Ventura I swore I wouldn't go in too early but this one sounds just about boring enough to try.
I'm glad they have fixed the login problems although as usual they tackle the least important things and not the rest of the VoiceOver experience such as the terrible text entry bugs and the horrible experience of trying to browse the web (either Safari is not responding, or just the many, many focus issues)
Have they fixed the problem with NumPad Commander not working in password fields?
Critical bug: Inaccurately reading texts
I've updated since yesterday and have found one particular bug that is critical, at least for me personally.
When pressing VO+Left/Right arrow to read texts by paragraph from an HTML view, such as on a web page or from an email content for example, Voice Over erroneously repeats a random string of text.
One publicly accessible page where this issue could be reproduced is here:
https://libraryleadersforum.org
Please use VO+Left/Right arrow to navigate to the paragraph starting with "At our in-person session,". Then listen out for the last couple of words at the end of the first sentence.
For me, Voice Over repeats the ending phrase "n the digital age." twice.
I'm running Sonoma 14.0 on a MacBook Pro 14 M2. If you have Sonoma, either official or beta, please could you confirm if this issue occurs on your setup?
Thanks.
Caps lock issue
I've had this issue since Ventura, but some how it disappeared then. It comes back after updating to Sonoma unfortunately.
I suspect it is something to do with installing Karabiner, which will solve the caps-lock notification problem, and then removing it if you don't need to use the app. If this is actually the case, I remember removing the app will still keep the issue at bay.
But let me do a screen recording to report it to Apple first. I'll experiment with Karabiner to see if it could help anyhow and will let you know.
Note that I believe this issue only happens to those setting the Caps-Lock key to be the only VO modifier key. Like for my case, I do not opt to use the Control and Option keys at all.
Capslock
I have mine set to where you can use both Capslock and Control Option.
Calendar grid view not working properly
With the Calendar app, I cannot use the VO+Up/Down Arrows to navigate one week at a time.
To reproduce the issue:
• Open Calendar app, then switch to Month View (pressing Command+3)
• Navigate to, and interact with the "Month Calendar Area"
• Navigate and interact with the grid
Now, you should land on the first Monday in the grid view. Pressing VO+Up/Down Arrows should jump to the previous/next day exactly one week apart from the current day.
In my case, VO+Left/Right Arrows goes to the next or previous day as expected, but VO+Up/Down Arrows cannot move to the next or previous week.
You can get Alex back.
If you lose him after updating, simply do a VO Shift Command Left or Right Aero until you get to the VO menu. Then do VO Shift Command Down Aero and go through the voices and you should find him again.
Jimmy's critical bug
This one worries me. The last thing we need is MacOs inventing more text that isn't there. I get enough of that when editing, so if it's starting to worm its way into reading as well that is concerning.
Can someone else who has taken the plunge try to reproduce it? I tried on the latest Ventura just for the sake of it, and it was fine.
A couple more bugs to add to the list
I have been using Sonoma for the last couple of months as I installed beta 5 on a separate partition and then on to my main one once it became more stable. There are a couple of bugs that I have reported on, even before beta 5 as I was briefly testing beta 1 when that came out (Yes, the bugs I am about to indicate have existed since beta 1, with feedback reported.)
1. Those who use caps lock as a modifier may have noticed that if you use VO left and right arrow and you scroll over a text field, an alert will come up to turn caps lock off. This is supposed to be a feature, at least for sighted people, where a flashing icon appears when caps lock is on. However, this will cause your focus to reset and the only way to be rid of it is to release the caps lock key and then press it once again. While this is limited to textfields in some apps, others, such as Messages, can show the alert where you least expect it. For example, if you are looking through your messages and scroll to the last message, the alert will come up. Releasing caps lock sends you back to the Message field, and interacting with the messages list will send you back up to the top, earlier messages. The only work-around, other than using control and option as your modifiers, is to ensure that you quickly release caps lock when you scroll to the last message.
2. If you are someone who uses a voice that is not American, or the Indian voice, Rishi, items with smart quotes around them will not read in certain contexts. I will show this at the last line of the comment and you may see it. If nothing follows the smart quote, it will not be read out. If something comes after, it will be read. To be clear, smart quote is where VoiceOver will say something like "Left double quotation mark" and "right double quotation mark," instead of just "quotation mark," when scrolling by character.
3. The same voices that cannot read smart quotes properly will also not correctly read repeated letters. When there are more than three of a character, these voices will read two. For instance, 4 X's will read "X X," not "X X X X." (I separated the characters with spaces so I hope that those skim reading with VoiceOver will hear this correctly.)
The other bugs mentioned are definitely note worthy, although the issue with single key quicknav may not be an issue at all. Tabbing to edit boxes usually works for me, and as was shown in a comment above, interacting with the edit box will also disable it. Of course, VO Q also works.
I will post an update if any of the above issues are fixed. In the mean time, here are a couple of sentences indicating the issue with the quotes.
“The following sentence should be read out if you are using Daniel or another voice that is not American,” I said.
I said, “This line may not be read correctly.”
Edit: I forgot to note a work-around regarding the issue of not reading quotes. You can press VO F3 (Or VO FN 3) to get it to read the item. Because it is followed by the text "is in the VoiceOver cursor." Or, if you are happy to do so, switch to an American voice or Rishi to get your quotes reading correctly again. I have no idea why Rishi works as well as the American voices, but there you have it...
VO not reading repeated and smart-quoted characters confirmed
I just tried on my end. I confirm that the bug #2 and #2 does appear here.
However, for the bug where VO won't read texts inside smart quotes, I have another workaround. Normally, I have the punctuation mode, "most", customised, to make Voice Over read out some key punctuations such as dash, m dash, n dash, and quotes. So, as with your explanation, with the phrase "right quote", being added after what is actually appearing on the screen, VO will not run into this issue and will be able to read the string normally.
Re: Jimmy's critical bug
Well against my better judgment I upgraded to Sonoma just now. I had been wrangling with a few annoying macOS bugs during the week so wanted to see if anything had been resolved, although I can guess. The login screen seemed to work without me restarting VOiceOver which was nice.
I tried to reproduce Jimmy's bug but it seemed to work correctly for me.
NumPad Commander and password fields
This bug was introduced a couple of Ventura releases ago and sorry to say is still present in Sonoma. I had hoped that being a recent bug we might have got lucky.
This is where using the numpad commander on a password field enters in characters instead of working like VoiceOver should.
A few quirks
After upgrading all my voices were changed to Serena Premium. My default voice was Stephanie which changed, but also I have activities that change the voice to Eddie/Eloquence and Siri, both of which were changed. Not sure if this is similar to the Alex problem reported above.
I noticed that in the Manage Voices screen, trying to navigate by headings kept giving me VoiceOver Utility is not responding over and over again. Plus the navigation here was really quirky. For example, there was a heading for English UK Eloquence, but I could only sometimes navigate to it. Under it was Eddie, but going back the other way went straight past the heading to Daniel. I think there were problems navigating by heading here with Ventura so this might not be new.
The other thing I noticed... on Ventura I dabbled with using Siri as the main voice but found that sometimes it was really slow - there was an obvious pause navigating between lists before it would speak. I'm not sure if this is fixed or if I was just looking in a different place, but I did notice with Siri that it is unbelievably slow to read characters as I am typing them. Like the rate has been set to 10 or something. This is UK Siri voice 1 I think (original Female voice). So had to turn that off again.
I also think that when I switch to the Eddie activity (now I have fixed the voice), it does seem much slower than before. I know I can adjust the WPM or rate but it felt quite noticeable as a default. I remember when installing Ventura it sped up all the voices so don't think it's the first time they have tinkered with this sort of thing.
Indentation
Sorry to be spamming this thread, I have found another little enhancement. I have indentation set to play a sound when coding. In Ventura this really slowed down browsing the code. It would ping, then pause, then read a line of code. Now it starts reading immediately, so you hear the ping and speech at the same time. Providing this actually works when using it for real, this could be a really big improvement because I always found it really slow when reading code.
Changing the Siri wake word
I don't want Siri to respond without the Hey. (I have a Ziggy Echo in this room and it's likely to get confused). But the "Listen for" dropdown list in the Siri settings does not appear to be accessible with VoiceOver.
If I open the menu and then use up and down arrows I just hear it struggle to say Tick and Off but not much else. Anyone found a magic way of being able to do this?
Phantom Repeated text
Well, maybe I have come across some repeated text.
https://www.thisisanfield.com/2023/09/confirmed-liverpool-lineup-vs-tottenham-nunez-and-trent-on-bench/
"Alexander-Arnold is fit enough for the bench and will be an option for the manager, as will " is spoken when I VO+Right to it, then repeated when I press VO+right again.
I've also had some horrible focus problems trying to read this article. It really is all over the place.
The first few times I tried Safari kept telling me something like "profess 90%" over and over again as I was trying to read it. Or even if I just left the keys alone. It eventually stopped on the 3rd or 4th attempt.
I can't say for sure that these problems wouldn't have occurred in Ventura, although I have been to this site before and don't remember anything like that.
It is disheartening to find that web browsing on a Mac with Safari is still a horrible experience in 2023.
Critical bug: Inaccurately reading texts
Hi Jimmy & all,
I just installed macOS Sonoma 14.0 on my M2 Mac mini. I tried the link you suggested, and I am not getting the double reading of the last two words of the first sentence in the paragraph you referenced. I am using the Eloquence synthesizer with the Reid US voice. I tried switching to different synthesizers, and none give me the double reading you mention.
Hope this helps,
Russell
Safari not responding seems to be gone
Hi all,
Since installing Sonoma I am no longer getting the annoying "Safari not responding" messages when going to a new web page. Very glad about that.
Cheers,
Russell
Re: Changing the Siri wake word
Hello,
I am afraid that this is to do with the issue I described above. Most voices, apart from the American ones or Eloquence, cannot read items surrounded by VoiceOver smart quotes. That is where VoiceOver reads "Left double quotation mark" rather than "quotation mark." As someone mentioned above, if you change your punctuation to All, or make a custom group based on All and remove the ones you don't want speaking, it will be a tempery fix for the problem.
I hope this can help.
Activities
Hello,
Sorry for posting two items here in a short space of time, but there is a bug I forgot to mention last time that I think is very important. Once again, Apple has had feedback about this since MacOS Sonoma beta 5 or so.
If you use the Activity chooser to switch to a different activity in an app that does not have its own activity, VoiceOver will switch back to the default as soon as you move the VoiceOver cursor. If you switch back to VoiceOver Settings while in an app with a custom activity, the activity will be reset back to the one for that app, again, once you move the VoiceOver cursor, or the window changes. This might be very irritating in apps like Parallels, where you might have made an activity with no speech or sound. If you then need to make a configuration change, as soon as you navigate with VoiceOver Settings selected, speech and sound will stop as the activity is reset to the one used for Parallels.
I also personally have an issue where I can't get activities to start per website. I have to manually switch to them. However, here is the one place where I can choose what activity I want. If I use the Activity Chooser in Safari, the activity will remain the one I chose. Once again however, it will reset once I switch out of Safari.
If anyone knows a better solution to this than just set up an automatic trigger for every activity, do let me know. :)
Something up with my Mac
After I updated to the latest version of macOS, my support worker report it to me of zooming away icons on the screen, even though no settings have been changed. This only happened whilst VoiceOver was on.
Re: Changing Wake Word and Activities
I changed the default voice to Ava (Premium) and this did fix the wake word combo - thank you! I have a couple of activities - one that changes to Eddie/Eloquence and a different one that changes the punctuation to full (still using Stephanie). Neither of the activities fixed the problem.
Why does VoiceOver have so much trouble with punctuation?
On the subject of Activities, I can confirm that it swaps back to the standard VO activity as soon as you use the VO keys.
I've got to say the Customise Voices list is really, really bad. If I navigate by headings forwards it navigates between three UK English types, but won't go further - so won't go to Australia, US etc. If I go back to the start and then go back again I get VO Utility not responding. So I ended up just pressing VO+right a million times until I got to the US languages.
VO+J
Has anyone noticed any differences using VO+J?
On Friday when I was on Ventura, I could use VO+J to bounce between message list and a couple of other things in Outlook. Now it seems to go all over the place, and I end up getting stuck in search eventually. It feels like the navigation has completely changed.
I then fired up Chrome. Before VO+J would bounce between toolbar, bookmarks bar and the web content. Now it goes between Close and New Tab. Well it was, now it's getting stuck in new tab on its own.
VO+J seems to work better in Mail. It seems unlikely that both Chrome and Outlook happened to update since last Friday so I assume it's a Sonoma problem.
VO+J in Safari
Actually, the behaviour is different in Safari. I'm sure prior to Sonoma VO+J would just go to the toolbar, and not much else. Now it's bouncing around different lambdmarks on the page. Although this behaviour might be useful as I think maybe it's jumping around landmarks or something, I'd rather it was a different key as VO+J was useful for just quickly getting to the main parts of an app. If it's going to get stuck in the content then it's an entirely different function in my opinion.
For the sake of my sanity, can anyone confirm that this is definitely different now?
Text editing seems even more random and annoying than ever
Yet more little bits annoying me this wmorning...
I wrote a comment in Jira, and was using Option+right arrow to skip through the words. But it was repeating almost every word as I moved through the sentence.
Now I always write web stuff in a text editor (Smultron) before copy and pasting it in because doing any text editing in a web browser is problematic. So I went back to Smultron.
Although it didn't have the same problem, I noticed on the first paragraph it was going ping every time, probably the indentation noise. No, the line was indented. On the second paragraph this didn't happen. And writing this comment here it didn't occur at all.
So it seems that Sonoma has somehow managed to make text editing even more random and annoying than ever before.
Navigating by headings
In web pages (Safari or Chrome), then navigting some headings the text of the heading is not spoken out.
This is very apparent with Atlassian sites like Confluence and Bitbucket.
For example, if I am reading a Confluence document and navigate to a heading:
In Sonoma: 2 items heading level 2
In Ventura: 2 items. requitements. Copy link to heading.
This is horrible. It means to browse by heading you need to go to each heading then vo+right to find out what it is. Or use the web rotor.
I've got to say the more I use Sonoma the more I regret updating to it. As with a lot of things in Macos it's not that there is a single showstopper bug, it's just death by 1000 cuts.
Phantom punctuation - damn you Apple!!
OK this is really crap. So I am using PyCharm and am noticing several issues that were not there in Ventura.
So let's say I go to a function function. I'm sat on "def" which is the first word on the line. I press option+right to skip a word. It says "def". Fine. I press optoin+right. It now speaks the name of the function plus the bracket. For example "test left parenthesis". In the past it would just read the name of the function. This is confusing for two reasons. Firstly, it suggests that the cursor is to the rtight of the bracket, but it's not, it's to the left. But, worse, if I press Option+right again it just speaks "left parenthesis" for a second time. This now suggests that there are 2 open brackets, which is just not the case.
Now, if I have a function that takes more than one argument I get this kind of thing with the commas. So it might read "self comma", then I press option+_right and it says "comma" then option+right again and "first comma" (if first is the name of the first parameter), then option+right again and it will repeat "comma", then option+right again to get "second comma". When I get to the last one it speaks the name of the parameter followed by "right parenthesis colon". Then optoin+right again and "righ tparenthesis colon".
If I try the same thing in Text Edit, it's similar. It reads the punctaution character after each word, but then does not repeat then when moving Option+right..
I should say that this requires punctuation to be spoken. I have "All" and no custom punctuation, because that's another thing that doesn't work.
One thing that drives me totally insane at work is that my typing isn't great, so I often end up with rogue punctuation where it shouldn't be. I can spend a significant portion of my day just chasing around where I've messed up the punctuation. This is going to be significantly harder now I've upgraded to Sonoma.
Honestly, this is the most upsetting thing I have found so far. Particularly because I have no confidence that Apple will fix it. If there was an easy way to roll back to Ventura then I would do it. I would urge any other VoiceOver uses to give it a miss for now.
Single Key navigation frustrations
I am disappointed with the changes to Single Key Navigation in Safari on macOS Sonoma, which I have found to be a big hit on efficiently navigating web pages.
With Single Key navigation turned on, I now have to interact with tables on web pages before I can use Single Key navigation within the table contents, and then have to move back out of the table for Single Key navigation to work on the rest of the web page. This interrupts the flow and efficiency of navigation.
I'm also experiencing far more times when Single Key navigation simply doesn't work, and I have to switch away from Safari and back again to get it working again.
Another issue I'm experiencing is that focus regularly jumps to either the address field or tab bar after activating links.
While I'm sure Apple's intentions were to improve navigation, I feel that these changes have made Single Key Navigation less fluid and efficient.
I'm curious to hear if others are finding these changes as disruptive to their VoiceOver workflow. Does anyone know if it's possible to configure VoiceOver on Sonoma in such a way that QuickNav can behave the same as previously - essentially being able to use the arrow keys to toggle both QuickNav and Single Key navigation at the same time?