macOS Golden Gate 27 Beta 4 Megathread

Let me tell you my SIRI experience. Before I enter a rambling bug report, I'd appreciate it if someone would tell me how it's supposed to work.

One,in Spotlight, if I say "Tell me a joke," Spotlight opens the Music app to a song called 'Tell Me A Joke." I went into System Settings > Spotlight and disabled the Music app. Now, Spotlight tells me "no results."

Two, there is no keyboard shortcut for Type To SIRI. When it's enabled, the only way to invoke SIRI is to go to Menu Extras. After I type my prompt, SIRI doesn't speak the response. I must navigate to it with VoiceOver.

Three. If I ask SIRI how to make SIRI speak responses when using Type to SIRI, SIRI tells me "I found this on the web" and points me to some incorrect or non-authorative articles, such as one that advises me to set spoken responses to Always (like SIRI thinks I'm on an iPhone), or a reddit article advising me to turn up the volume.

Four. When I go to System Settings > SIRI, I see the following.
* A Requests button. When I click it, it takes me to an empty window.
* A language button that works normally
* A voice button that works normally
* A Responses button. Lets me specify Prefer Spoken and show SIRI responses. All are set correctly.
* A Turn Off SIRI button.
Every indication is that SIRI is on and should be listening. Nothing tells me otherwise. Though I am a little concerned about that empty Requests window.

Five. When I speak a SIRI prompt into my microphone, I get no indication that SIRI is listening. If there is a visual response or indicator onscreen, there is no audio or VoiceOver indication.

That's essentially my experience too. It's sadly yet another example of Apple dropping the ball on accessibility. Let me know what the feedback number and categories are when you send your report, and I'll send another one referencing yours. I doubt it'll do any good, but maybe the more people they hear from, the more likely they'll deem us worthy enough to listen to and prioritize.

Afvanced SIRI capabilities non-functional after beta 3 clean install
FB23905409

The content is basically a paraphrase of my previous comment, with emphasis on the empty Requests window, which (I suspect) is the primary symptom of concern.

Open the window chooser. Is anyone besides me seeing "System Dialog - - untitled - from MenuBarAgent" at the top of the list? Selecting it takes focus to a dialog, and if I fiddle around with it enough, I find my focus is in the menu extras.

Not sure what the point of this is, or even how to report it.

Do you have any third-party applications in your menu extras? Also, is Siri in your menu extras? Just out of curiosity, have you tried going into the system settings and removing Siri from the menu extras?
I'm just wondering if that's what that strange dialogue is, and if removing Siri from the menu extras would get rid of it?
Just food for thought. 😇

There was a strange system dialog that was always in the Window Chooser in betas 1 and 2 that took you to the Control Center, but it disappeared with beta 3. I have no idea what it was or what your current issue is.

I set up beta 3 as a new Mac. That system dialog has always been there, right from the first time I booted Golden Gate, and long before I put anything in the menu extras. It seems to be an inherent mis-feature of Golden Gate. So I'm kind of surprised no one else here is experiencing it.

I can understand why sighted people might not experience it. Maybe it's an entirely invisible window. If so, the only way anyone would know about it is if they use VoiceOver and bring up the window chooser.

I'll file a feedback report. It might be a symptom of some underlying issue.

In other news, I filed a feedback report regarding a Mail client smart mailbox issue and got a nearly immediate response from Apple requesting more information. I wish their VoiceOver team were as responsive.

@PaulMartz, you are definitely not alone in seeing this. I reported what appears to be the same issue to Apple during the first Golden Gate developer betas.

On my system, VoiceOver’s Window Chooser contained a window named something like “System Dialog - - untitled - from MenuBarAgent”. Entering it placed VoiceOver in what appeared to be a duplicate representation of the menu extras area. I could navigate through the same number of elements as I had menu extras in the right-hand side of the menu bar, but the elements in this duplicate container were generally unlabeled and VoiceOver only made its navigation click sound.

The normal menu extras navigation shortcut, VO-M-M, continued to work correctly and exposed the real menu bar items with their proper labels. That was one of the reasons I concluded that this extra dialog was unintended rather than a new way to access menu extras.

I also attached a screenshot to my report. Visually, there was no visible dialog or window on the desktop, but when VoiceOver focus was inside this ghost dialog, the visible accessibility focus ring appeared around the actual menu extra icons. This strongly suggested that an internal MenuBarAgent container was being exposed to VoiceOver as a top-level system dialog/window, when it should only have been exposed as part of the menu bar accessibility hierarchy.

My report is:

**FB23491090 — “VoiceOver detects ghost ‘System dialogue box’ from MenuBarAgent in Window Chooser (duplicate, unlabeled Menu Extras container)”**

@Brian, I do not think this is caused by Siri or third-party menu extras. I saw it with my normal set of menu extras, but the behaviour looked like a system-level duplication of the entire menu extras container rather than a problem with one specific item. @PaulMartz also reports seeing it on a newly set-up system before adding his own extras, which supports that theory.

The good news is that I am now on macOS Golden Gate 27 developer beta 4, and the actual “System Dialog - - untitled - from MenuBarAgent” window no longer appears in my Window Chooser. VoiceOver still presents the “System Dialogs” category there, even though it contains no windows, which may itself be slightly odd, but the inaccessible ghost dialog is gone for me.

@PaulMartz, since you mention that you are on beta 3, it may be worth checking beta 4 when you install it. I would still encourage you to file your own report, particularly if you can reproduce it on beta 3 or later. Referring to **FB23491090** may help Apple connect the reports.

Thanks Cliff. I submitted another report and referenced yours. I mentioned the dialog was present immediately after a clean install of beta 3 and persists in beta 4.

No, I ain't Steve.
But did they unhide the developer options we have since tahoe 26.0 dev beta 1?
See my comment in the GG beta 1 thread, as I will not repeat myself for more than a year on the literally same issue.

This is incredibly confusing. My experience is now somewhat different after upgrading to beta 4 and resetting my Mac. I'm using an M4 2024 Mac mini with 16 GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD.
I can type to Siri using Spotlight and it works, but as you said and I've observed before, it doesn't speak, meaning I have to use VoiceOver to read the answer. Activating Siri from menu extras only works if I have a USB headset with microphone connected, in which case it plays the chime and I can begin talking. If I don't have a microphone connected, it seems to briefly open something, then immediately close. As far as I can tell, the main thing that's broken here is the lack of spoken responses when using type to Siri. I also don't have the requests button in System Settings>Siri, but I can open the Siri app and read all my previous chats as well as start a new one.

I really hope this gets addressed. Siri is working fine for me other than not speaking the responses for typed queries. Using Spotlight seems to be an acceptable solution, and I hear a sound to tell me when voice activation begins.