Apple's macOS 14.2 Release Aims to Finally Resolve Longstanding “Safari Not Responding” Bug While watchOS 10.2 and tvOS 17.2 Also Launch

hey, IOS 14.2 dropped, so maybe it works?
how do I can do it?

To my knowledge, sideloading on iOS is not currently supported, but is rumored to become possible in early 2024 for customers in the European Union.

Is the issue with One Drive on Mac fixed in this update by any chance?
I’m still on Ventura and hesitant to update until this is fixed.

Is the showstopping VMware Fusion bug still happening on 14.2? Or can VM's be booted with voiceOver on?

Best
Malthe

Unfortunately, the problem still exists.

I wonder if this is not more Microsoft's fault.

Could someone please tell me where to find the option to turn on swiping between watch faces in the settings. Thank you.

After all, they're the one that fixes them. of course you can't declare a bug to be definitively squashed unless Apple's release notes, support teams, or feedback mechanisms say it is. The headline of this post is misleading at best and downright awful journalism at worst because Apple themselves make no mention in their release notes of the "Safari not responding" bug, let alone allude to the status of its resolution. Software developers, unlike journalists and tech writers, know that a bug is not fixed until we, as the developer of the software in question, release the fix for it. And remember - end users don't know better than the developers of the software they have the privilege of using, especially when it comes to bugs like this one that, as you rightly point out, are so inconsistently reproducible. Let Apple as the developer be the final word on this one, just as they should be.

I upgraded to the public beta of Sonoma 14.2 yesterday and wish to upgrade to the stable channel version. However, System Settings -> General tells me that my Mac is up to date. Is there any way to rectify this?

I have never really had major problems with the SNR bug, but can say that Safari seems a bit more snappy, and also I am happy to see an extra setting in VO utility which enables text entry when single letter nav is enabled. This should have been a thing since this change was first made, but I think it will make it work like they actually intended from the first, and I rather like it now, since I don't have to keep toggling like crazy. Seems to be working pretty well. Thanks to Apple for actually listening to our feedback.

No, the fusion bug is still here. I'm guessing it's a bug that VMWare needs to fix. As its not a direct problem with windows, I don't think Microsoft can help.

Justin,
Thanks for the tip about the new setting for text entry in VoiceOver Utility. That explains Apple's request for me to check my report on this issue and me not noticing any change in the behavior. Wish they had elaborated on the specifics of their fix in their message to me, but in any case, this post has now been updated to note this enhancement.

Hi,
Is it just me or are there some small changes and tweeks about spatial audio? I think that wirtual room effects are decreased, especially when you activate the stereo to dolbi atmos function.
If so, it is great for especially for the video apps like apple tv or Prime video because when spatial audio is active, the wirtual room effect suppresses the original audio, like I'm listening the audio thrue an external sound system and I don't like that effect. İnterestingly, this wirtual sound system effect doesn't apply to audio files.

For ages I've just got Safari Not Responding when trying to log into Amazon Web Services console. Just tried and it worked! Hopefully it will continue to do so.

I've only used it for a few mins so far but not noticed any other fixes. So Option+right is still a horrible mess. The activity switching bug is still there. VO+J still doesn't seem any different. Not tried the navigate by heading thing yet but guessing that's still broken.

So while the not responding bug may be better, it still doesn't excuse a truly terrible update.

Forgot, I had created a sample html file to demo the headings problem. As expected, bug is still there. So if you navigate to a heading that contains child elements it won't read out the heading text.

Thanks for confirming!

In This post on VMware communities They're saying they're waiting on Apple to resolve a related issue. The Microsoft comment was from someone else and regarding a different bug, I believe.

Best

M

Good day. I wonder is it possible to navigate normally between messages and their content in Mail with VO J command, and are there any fixes for inconsistent VO focus behaviour that has been present in Ventura and, by some accounts, in Senoma?

VO+J has changed in Sonoma and 14.2 seems to be the same. In Mail, it does switch between a selected message in the list and its preview on the right. But elsewhere it just seems a lot less useful than it did before. I'm told Windows Spots are an alternative (VO with square brackets) and that this has improved in Sonoma but not so much in apps that I use.

My general experience of Sonoma compared to Ventura is that there are just a few more focus issues than before - everything just feels a bit looser, but that might be my memory playing tricks on me. It's certainly no better. Sometimes it's more noticeable due to other bugs. E.g. the navigate by heading if the heading has a child means you have to wobble left and right a bit to try to figure out what the heading is and the focus just seems to be a bit unpredictable.

I've not been using 14.2 long enough to know if any focus issues have been fixed but I'm not holding my breath.

@mr grieves thanks. Pity there are even more focus issues. For me these are real frustration points

Bear in mind that this will vary depending on your use cases. I seem to be suffering more than most with Sonoma, or maybe I'm just more vocal than most. I think I am also slowly beginning to forget how much Ventura annoyed me - that was the reason I switched to Sonoma more quickly than would have been sensible. So it is possible your experience would be better.

VO+J has definitely changed behaviour. I have a feeling this won't be classified as a bug but it's definitely less useful. In Ventura it seemed that it would just take you around the most useful bits of an app - e.g. toolbar, message list, message etc. In Chrome it would take me between the web page, the toolbar and the bookmarks bar. Now sometimes it's one way and you press it and then get stuck and have to revert to normal VO keys to nail you out. Or it will jump around specific parts of the screen. I might be wrong, but I think with web pages it's maybe jumping around landmarks or something. I've noticed in Spotify, which I think is really a web app, it does jump around quite useful to things like playback controls. But since Sonoma I've just left VO+J for dead.

Typically, the last beta is the release candidate build, so the same as the public release.

Turning off beta updates in Settings should offer you an update to the public release if it is different to the beta that you are currently running.

Color me surprised to wake up this morning and find that 100s of bugs I believed were resolved over the years are apparently still present, since Apple has not confirmed fixing them in release notes 😱

But, hang on, Apple also never publicly acknowledged most of these bugs existed in the first place. Does this mean that they didn't? 😕

Life truly becomes very confusing when the trolls visit 🙄

In previous versions if I changed the Siri wake word the dropdown list of items couldn't be spoken out. I think this was caused by the smart quote bug where VO couldn't read anything in smart quotes unless using a US voice. Well, with 14.2 I think maybe this is fixed? I can certainly hear the wake words.

Just had a really bad hang with it and had to force quit Safari.

It's no doubt just me, but I can never get the hang of switching tabs properly in Safari. Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab always seem to take me to unexpected places. And Safari regularly doesn't speak the name of the tab. So I usually do ctrl+tac, cmd+tab, cmd+tab just to find out where I am. And then I find it's put a load of tabs in a different window. So I go there and think I've cleared everything done but keep finding really old tabs in there that shouldn't be any more. It just never quite works as I expect.

And if you open a new tab or close a tab it will inevitably put you in some random location so you have to go hunting for where you were. Anyway, I think I found da Jira ticket I was looking at yesterday but it totally killed Safari and wouldn't come back.

(I know someone on here did suggest using windows and never tabs for Safari but never put the effort into trying to change my muscle memory but I must try it.)

One other random thing I noticed, which isn't new o 14.2 but is to Sonoma. I created a weba pp thingy for AWS Management Console. But after I put my MFA code in, it takes me back to Safari and tells me I need to sign in again. Not sure what that's all about, but it's a shame as this would be quite a nice way to work with an app I tend to open a billion windows/tabs with at a time. I also noticed that it didn't allow my password to be auto-completed for some reason, not that it matters if I can't login anyway.

Hi. Subject says it all. I just updated this morning, and am using Safari to type this. I'm also noticing that the letter "Y" is spoken with an accent, as are some other letters. I haven't checked into this much, but I'm sure as time passes I will do so.

Thanks for the confirmation that the One Drive bug is still present, disappointing though it is.
Due to this and various other regressions being reported with Sonoma, it looks like I’ll be sticking with Ventura a while longer. In fact I had been considering upgrading my Mac in 2024, but I’m not sure I see that happening anymore.
Dave

There's a window in my schedule early next week. I thought I might make the jump from 13.6.1 to 14.2. But after reading these comments, I'm unenthused about experiencing a few hours of downtime while I upgrade, get frustrated, and then downgrade back to Ventura. I've just got too much stuff going on in my life to absorb that amount of downtime.

Can someone tell me if the Google Drive bug has been fixed, where pressing the J and K keys to navigate through the list of files does not read the file name. It seems to change with every release. It used to work. Then, each file was announced as "list box, loading". After that, many files would announce as a table with VoiceOver describing number of rows and columns. Lately, each file is announced as "more info, button". It seems like VoiceOver can read a Google Drive file name as pretty much anything other than its actual name. Well, if this bug is fixed, somebody let me know. That, alone, would be worth the upgrade, even if Safari is Still Not Responding.

And I really hope the Safari Not responding issue is fixed, because I'd hate to table my 2024 shopping list. I'm planning to buy about two grand of new hardware. Only Tim Cook can decide whether that money goes to Apple or stays in my bank account.

No way am I upgrading to Sonoma. I'll wait. Better the devil you know.

I agree with some of the posts above, sticking with Ventura seems to be the safer bet for now. 13.6.1 is a fairly solid build overall. Not responding issues aside.

Perhaps the Sonoma updates in '24 will bring real change to macOS.

Time will tell... 🤨

Not really VO related, but in the previous version when you started a timer, then restarted it when it was done, the remaining time wouldn't show in the complication. I've only tried once but it looks like this might be fixed.

Also, pleased that I don't have to confirm ending a workout any more. It looks like this setting is off by default as I didn't have to change anything, so maybe everyone else thought it was as pointless as me.

The bug where the watch doesn't show what's playing for some things is still present. I think this happens if I airplay to a speaker then start a podcast. Whereas if I do it the other way round or use other apps like YouTube then it does work as it should. If they can fix this then WatchOS 10 will be roughly on par with 9 for me.

It does seem that every big Apple upgrade brings with it a load of features I won't use and sets us back and the best result is that we end up with something that's no worse than before after a few fixes. It seems that if a relese only breaks a few minor things we all treat it as a big success.

Regarding Macos, I would say only go to Sonoma if the Not Responding bug is driving you crazy. Otherwise you are better off on Ventura for sure.

Hi Paul. I can confirm that the Google Drive bug that prevents normal navigating behaviour, either by pressing J and K, or pressing up and down arrows still very much exists in the latest Mac OS update 14.2. Just gave it a go.

This might not be new as I've not been able to log into AWS Management console for a while on the Mac, but it definitely didn't happen the last time I could.

Some of the tables have an option to filter them, which happens client-side. If I do this, then navigate to the table, VO will tell me that it has, say, 4 columns and 9 rows. But if I navigate down the table, it instead moves columns instead of rows and then won't get to any of the actual dataa. So I can only get the headings. If I refresh the page I can navigate the table, so I think it is something to do with the way the filtering works.

I presume it is a VO rather than AWS bug because VO does seem to know how many rows there are, but it just can't get to them. I've been using this on Windows recently without a problem. Amazon do refresh the UI quite often though so I can't be certain they haven't done something.

Anyone else noticed anything like this?

I've been experiencing a very similar issue with a couple of tables in Safari that I use regularly for work. It's been ongoing for at least the past year. I have a sighted colleague confirm that when the tables are filtered, the rows display and behave as expected when not using VoiceOver.

I'm fairly certain this is a VoiceOver bug rather than an issue with the tables themselves. Unfortunately the tables aren't publicly accessible, so I can't share them with Apple to demonstrate the problem.

If anyone knows of any public webpages with filterable tables that reproduce this behaviour, please let me know. I'd love to be able to point Apple to some examples where the problem can be consistently replicated.

Thanks, Jimmy. Very disappointing. Apple accessibility had me create a video that clearly showed the behavior, so I knew they were aware of the problem. Since they were already elbow-deep in Safari and Webkit for SNR, I had hoped they would also address this issue, while the design and layout of the code was fresh in their heads. Oh well.

For those of you working with Google Drive. Have you tried to use Google Drive both with, and without, the "Always allow keyboard commands to navigate websites" setting, found under Web > Navigation in the VO Utility?

I don't do very intensive web stuff on the mac side. On the mac, I do edit some audio, and very basic stuff in Safari, so no coding, no programming, nothing intense. I found the issue with single letter nav having to be toggled all the darn time to be worse than the SNR bug by far. Now that single letter nav has been fixed with the option in VO utility that I previously discussed, I find Safari to be pretty snappy and do just about everything I could need. Granted, there isn't much get up and go in the i5 in this 2018 mb air, especially compared to an m1 mac, or my m2 iPad pro, but since the update, I find Safari to be working better than it has in a long long time.
I don't use Onedrive or Google Drive, just iCloud, so don't experience any of the issues people here have described. Of course it depends on your needs and work flow, but my experience with 14.2 has been very very positive, and if I had it all to do over again, I probably would have stayed on Ventura until 14.2 to be released, and then updated. For me, 14.2 is a pretty sweet spot. Curious to see how things progress from here.

Thanks for the suggestion, Brian. The problem is that VoiceOver doesn't correctly announce the name of the file or folder that you navigate to. I don't believe "Always allow keyboard commands to navigate websites" has any control over what VoiceOver announces, only how VoiceOver navigates. Navigation with Google Drive's native shortcuts works fine. Let me know if you had a different experience.

It used to work. It has been broke for a year now, since Ventura.

It's the holiday season, so, frustrated rant deleted. LOL.

Subject line says it all, while language switching for multilingual users seems to be fixed, Safari notorious not responding issue seems to persists.

Safari Bug seems to persist!

Think I will stick with Ventura. There are just too many little things in Sonoma that irk me. Also if 14.2's Webkit bug is truly fixed, that update will trickle down to Ventura in a safari update, sooner or later.

Just my 2 cents.. 🤷🏼‍♂️

When I updated to watchOS 10.2, my VoiceOver voice changed from Zoey Enhanced to Samantha, and I can't change it back. I tried changing it back using the Watch app on my iPhone and then on the watch itself, deleted and redownloaded Zoey Enhanced and repeated those steps, but no joy. I had a very long conversation with Apple Accessibility and unpaired my watch and set it up as new, and the problem still persists. I hope Apple comes up with a fix for this very soon. I know there are some who like the Samantha voice, but I can't stand it and I know I'm not alone.

Did not realize there was a 13.6.(3) update to Ventura. I also have Safari 17.2 as of a day or so ago.

Still getting 'not responding' with Safari, although it is not as often or as frequent.

That's something, I guess... 🫤🙄

I've been using the Duck Duck Go browser for Mac. That seems to be a (lot) more efficient over Safari, in its current state. 🤷🏼‍♂️

It's taking me long enough to figure out single-key vs. arrow-key quick nav, I'd suggest people go ahead and update unless there's some overwhelming reason not to, such as perhaps the OneDrive bug previously mentioned. Separation of quick navs seems to be the future, might as well get used to it...

Also, is Duck Duck Go much better than Chrome?

Can confirm SNR still occasionally happens but is much less frequent.

after I saw the suggestion above, I had a google and was expecting DuckDuckGo to be based on Chromium, but it's WebKit. So I'm definitely going to be giving that a go.

It's a shame that Chromium has so many problems (at least for me) as it would be nice to have a credible alternative to WebKit.

I honestly don't know the problems Chromium has on Mac in relation to WebKit. I've never really been satisfied with Chrome, but mostly because I like the layout of Safari better, I think.

I have to say I think the UI for Chrome is much better than Safari. For example, it seems like switching tabs in Chrome actually works sensibly. The tabs menu is also pretty handy. Before Sonoma broke it, VO+J worked better in Chrome too.

But I find chromium more problematic. With tables, for example, it can't cope i the table is bigger than the page. It also has even more focus problems than Safari, if such a thing is possible. I often get stuck in Jira or Bitbucket and have to resort to Safari. Or I did find browsing documents would randomly shunt focus up the page so I'd end up reading the same thing over and over again.

It's a shame. I'd probably go with Edge if it wasn't for these issues. It's basically the same as Chrome but with the lovely read aloud mode.

During a working day I tend to use all 3. If DuckDuckGo fixes Safari's UI then it will at least be an improvement there. I've installed it but not had a good chance to try it yet, other than a basic check to make sure that things like the settings menu are accessible, which it is. I like the idea of using a slightly less mainstream browser. I used to love Opera in the day before it turned into Chrome, then it was Vivaldi all the way until I needed to use a screen reader.

I've also encountered the Chrome issue with large tables. We can send spacecraft to the outer fringes of the solar system but after 30 years of the internet we still can't make a web browser. It's like we live in some kind of upside-down bizarro world.

Thanks, Brian, I'll upgrade to the latest Ventura, then consider trying Sonoma again sometime this week, at least long enough to record a couple videos that will accompany bug reports.

I upgraded to Safari 17.2, but I'm staying on 13.6.1 for now. I'm still planning to dabble my toes in 14.2, if Santa brings me a free day or two for Christmas.

If I decide to back out of 14.2, I'll almost certainly migrate to 13.6.3 at that time.

It's rather like an OS shell game.

From my own observations, Chrome is kind of a nightmare to work with. At least on Mac.

On Windows, I get along fine with Edge, which I am aware is Chromium-based. Still, it works well enough with NVDA.

I like Duck Duck Go for the most part. It has a minimalist layout, and loads pretty quickly. Maybe the only thing I have any 'issue' with is auto complete in the address bar. That is more of a VO thing, though. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Good luck with Sonoma. I'm sticking with Ventura until macOS 15. 😏