I've came across two issues that are related. I thought I'd share my findings and see if anyone else experiences the same thing.
One. VoiceOver Preferences does not save the website setting of an activity. To reproduce, go into VO Utility. Create a new activity for a specific website. Go to that website and notice that all works as expected. Return to VO Utility and save your VO Preferences. Reset VO to default. Finally, load the preferences you previously saved and try to go to your activity website. You'll notice the activity doesn't switch automatically. You must manually select it with VO+X. If you then launch VO Utility and examine the activity, you'll find that the website you specified is no longer present.
Two. Command+Tab doesn't announce the name of the first app icon. This seems to occur when you have an activity that is tied to a specific website. While viewing the website in Safari, with the activity in use, Command+Tab away and notice the first app icon name isn't announced. Get rid of all activities, or get rid of the activity website settings, and Command+Tab will behave correctly.
The second issue is related to the first, in that the first bug will clear the activity website setting, causing the second bug to go away.
I have not used activities until now. Except, I do seem to recall I tried them when this feature first became available. And if I remember correctly, I experienced the same kind of behavior and stopped using them. If my memory is correct, these issues have been around for several MacOS releases with no change or improvement.
Comments
Additional information
Well, the VO Preferences file is text. And if I open it in TextEdit, I see that it has definitely saved the specific website for my activity. Apparently this information is dropped during the restore process.
I should also mention I'm on Ventura 13.6.1, though this weirdness with activities has been around long enough that I suspect the same incorrect behavior exists in Sonoma.
Ran a diff on VO preferences
Because VO Preferences are a text file, I ran a simple experiment to find out what preferences are not being restored. If you'd like to play along, here are the steps.
1. In VO Utility, File menu, export your preferences.
2. Also under file menu, reset Basic and Custom VO settings to default.
3. Still under file menu, import your preferences.
4. Repeat step 1, except specify a different file name. After this step, you will have two preferences files in the same directory. They should be identical, because you imported the first file before exporting the second..
5. Open terminal and cd to whatever directory you saved your preferences.
6. Use "ls -l" to generate a long listing, and compare the file sizes. They should be the same size. If they're off by even one byte, they're not the same.
7. Use "diff <firstPreferenceFile> <secondPreferenceFile>" to display the differences between the two files.
For me, step 7 shows some GUID differences, which are probably not relevant, plus the missing website for my VoiceOver activity.
New issue
Just to add more confusion, #2 would likely be related to, or be caused by, a new activity related bug in macOS 14 in which even moving to a different UI element in the same app can cause VO to not speak the element and reset the activity to VO settings. That is to say, the issue you’re speaking of has probably morphed into something worse. I’ve reported the issue to Apple, along with the screen recording and log they requested, though the macOS accessibility team seem to be far slower than for iOS.
Portable Prefs?
Hey Paul,
Would Portable Preferences be a possible work-around for the issue with importing saved VO settings?
No idea
No idea. The issue I found is different to the OP’s in the sense that it changes the selected activity rather than losing data, but similar in the sense that it’s triggered by a focus change.
never noticed this.
Never noticed these specific issues. One thing I have noticed about VO activities is that if you are on a web sight and you use the activity chooser to choose an activity, then command+tab away from that app, VoiceOver will switch back to the VoiceOver settings activity (default settings, no activity is selected). You will have to open the activity chooser and select it again.
Memory Lane
Hey Paul.
You remember right. I tried activities a few times here and there and ran into the same issues. finally gave up on it. Smile. Still, at least Apple gets to brag about accessibility features, even if they never work, right?
Activities usually work well for me
I mainly use activities for coding vs normal use and generally they work quite well. The only thing that never worked was having a custom punctuation set for a custom activity which is quite irritating. I now just put up with the incredibly verbose default punctuation names such as "quotation mark" but in the grand scheme of things, that's not too bad.
I also have activities setup called "Slow Down" which uses a different voice at a slower speed, for those times when I am just struggling to figure out what is being said, and one which switches to Eloquence for some rare occasions where that's helpful (e.g. very long PascalCasedWords are spoken not spelled out in Eloquence vs other voices). Oh and one that switches to an American voice for the times I need to hear words in smart quotes.
I've found that having activities auto switch on web sites always works when I set them up but then after not very long I find it's not switching to them any more. Ans so I tend to just give up.
I noticed in Sonoma 14.0 that cmd+tab would not read out the first app properly - it would just hiss for a split second. I can't remember if it was activity based - I think it just did it all the time. But it was fixed in Sonoma 14.1. About the only thing Apple actually have fixed in Sonoma. I never noticed this in Ventura.
As mentioned, Sonoma did introduce a bug which has made manually switching activities a lot less useful. Now using any vo keys or bringing up a dialog will just switch back.
Finally I noticed a seemingly useless new feature in Sonoma where you can choose to auto switch activity based on some kind of workload category, like web browsing or word processing. I have absolutely no clue how it knows which app goes in which category, unless it only applies to Apple''s own apps. It just seems better to use the normal way so you know which apps are counting. Not sure if adding this ambiguous and pointless new feature is responsible for the new activity bugs or not. But you've got to wonder who is asking for a new feature like this.
Reported to Apple
Okay, I did a screen recording that shows Command+Tab works just fine, then add an activity specific to a website, then go to that website, and when you try to Command+Tab away, the first app icon name is not announced. Submitted the screen recording to Apple Accessibility. Let's hope it gets fixed.
On a day when I have more time and energy, I'll report the activity website preference not being restored.