Hello!
I had initially posted a variant of this text in the release concerning the aim to resolve the SNR bug thread, but figured I would post it here as well so as to potentially gather input from other users who either experience said bugs as well or might have potential solutions, workarounds and/or next steps.
I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Apple had introduced the option to promote a less frustrating experience with Single Key Quick Nav and text fields. Unfortunately, though, said experience is soured pretty significantly by a complete lack of feature stability. More specifically, I seem to intermittently encounter the following issues:
* Sometimes VoiceOver seemingly becomes confused in regards to when Single Key should and shouldn’t be on. Even when not in text fields, it’ll occasionally pass single letters to the website in question. A good place to try this is on Reddit, where it randomly started hiding posts in my feed when I’d press H even though I’d turned Single Letter on. Most times toggling it off and back on rectifies the issue ( at least temporarily), but some websites will just keep on confusing it into continuously reproducing buggy behaviour.
* Multi-line text fields, such as the one that I’m using to type up this reply tend to also throw VO off, and it’ll more often than not completely disrespect the single letter text fields preference. This also happens in places like Spotlight Search and Safari’s location bar, seemingly because both instances don’t directly drop you into the edit field for some reason (I think this might be another separate bug in and of itself).
* I’m not a fan of the fact that using F and Shift+F to navigate text fields will automatically switch into the “ignore Single Letter” mode. In my opinion, the ideal behaviour would see this be an option toggle where text field jump controls doesn’t automatically assume that you’d like to start typing like tab does, and instead lets you continue navigating using Single Letter. Only if you tab into or interact with a text field should it begin ignoring Single Letter automatically.
* Sometimes, Single Key will completely refuse to respond and has to be toggled off and back on. This is most seen when doing something like reading, say, an AppleVis post/reply line by line using up and down arrow, then hitting something like H or Shift+H with Single Key on. Sometimes this’ll even happen when using L to move between links, where it’ll randomly lock up and you have to re-focus on another page element to continue. I’m fairly certain this has something to do with the bug where sometimes navigating to an element (such as link) will randomly lock you on that element and the only way to move away from it is to stop interacting (despite the fact that I never interacted with it in the first place)!
* Along with the fact that the SNR bug is still present, Safari seems to now exhibit a new odd behaviour on some webpages where it’ll cut off the last few letters of a line when scrolling using the arrow keys. Even when using left and right arrow to locate the missing letters, they’re nowhere to be found. It’s as if the pages in question are written incorrectly, which is simply not true because they render properly on my Windows machines. In these cases, using option+left or right arrow to attempt moving between words fails pretty spectacularly and begins announcing disjointed, fragmented attempts at words and letters and generally behaves like VoiceOver is suffering a stroke.
In Conclusion: Absolutely nothing was fixed in the 14.2 MacOS update that pertains to Safari stability (at least from my end after testing a number of new Macs with fresh Sonoma installs on each). I’ve never gone out of my way to report bugs to Apple so am unsure of how I should proceed with what I would call pretty staggering issues, or if I should even bother. I’ve gotten the vibe thus far that people have spent years reporting these sorts of issues and they have yet to be resolved. Am I the only one experiencing some or all of these oddities?
Comments
While I find single-key…
While I find single-key Quick Nav convenient in reducing the number of keystrokes required to navigate webpages, it's current unpredictability, and a lack of clarity (at least from my perspective) as to how Apple intends this feature to work in various contexts detracts from its overall appeal as a timesaver and productivity booster.
OH The Bug Got A Name!
I like the idea that now we can use SNR, which is phenomenal considering that names normally take time to be attached to objects and abstractions, SNR should be included in the dictionary. If Apple only recognises they are taking to fix ridiculous bug too much of time until it had a name!