Make it possible to unsync single key quick nav and the other VoiceOver rotors

By TheBlindGuy07, 8 March, 2025

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Hi, let me know what you think about that.
FB16781468, suggestion
In your VoiceOver documentation, there are several ways to access the rotor. The rotor is much more uniformed on iOS, and is the primary way most users use to access or navigate by different elements on the screen, headings in an app window or html elements on a webpage for example. MacOS VoiceOver rotors have some undocumented subtle differences between the vo+u rotor, the one accessed with vo+cmd+arrow keys and the one with the trackpad gestures. Most importantly, although it’s not traditionally referred as “rotor” in itself but rather the “find” commands, because there are about four different ways to access, say, the next or previous link on a webpage:
1. Pressing vo+cmd+l or vo+cmd+shift+l, find next/previous link
2. If at least single key quick nav is turned on, and assuming that the user uses the default command in VoiceOver, pressing l/shift+l to go to the next/previous link
3. If the option link is checked in VoiceOver utility —> web —> web rotor
a) Press vo+u to invoke a VoiceOver menu showing the elements on a web page, navigating to link with left and right arrow and then pressing up or down arrow to go to the next/previous link
b) The following are three different ways to perform the exact same action
1) Press vo+cmd+left/right arrow key to move to the previous/next rotor element, go to link, and then press vo+cmd+up/down arrow to go to the previous/next link
2) with arrow key quick nav on, press left+up arrow or right+up arrow to move to the previous or next rotor element, choose link and then press up or down arrow to go the previous or next link
3) With the trackpad commander on, rotate clockwise or counterclockwise to find link, then flick up or down with one finger to move to the previous or next link
My usual way to use VoiceOver on the web especially is to always use the vo+cmd… find commands, because quick nav is unreliable and unpractical. I’d often navigate, and at the same time use the word rotor with vo+cmd+arrows to read a chunk of text in smaller fragments easier to digest. I really want to use quick nav, but the way how it’s currently implemented makes it more of an annoyance for me than anything else.
Say I use the full quick nav. Navigate to a heading or a link. If I want to read that element by character or word, I have to manually adjust the rotor with either 3.b)1), 3.b)2) or 3.b)3).
I'd like you to add in a future os update of macos 16 at the very least or a coming version of Sequoia the ability to choose which rotor (or find command) is synced with what, so quick nav becomes an actual attractive option for VoiceOver users.
Thanks, and please don’t hesitate to ask for more details.

Options

Comments

By Mert Ozer on Saturday, March 8, 2025 - 14:22

I noticed that people are sharing their feedback numbers in their posts. Can we access the feedback using its respective number to vote or support it in any way? The question is, do they mean anything for us?

By Levi Gobin on Saturday, March 8, 2025 - 15:22

I think the reason that people share feedback numbers is that if we make a report of our own, we can say that somebody else was having the issue, and that their feedback number is FB12345678. That is my guess