Voiceover sputters

By Mani, 5 January, 2018

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

I am running Hi Sierra (latest update) on a 2011 iMac. Of late, I noticed that Voiceover runs in jerks and spurts. This is especially annoying when I use the Read All (VO + A) command. Besides it keeps saying 'Voiceover Settings Activity'. Some poster recommended running the killall command in Terminal but that seems do nothing to VO's behavior. I have even tried changing voices to no avail.
I am wondering if my machine is too old or is there something I can do to prevent this annoying behavior?

Happy New Year to you all and thanks.

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Comments

By sockhopsinger on Saturday, January 27, 2018 - 05:33

IT probably isn't built to handle a much more processor-intense operating system like Sierra.

I might agree with you. But do you know why it keeps saying 'Voiceover Settings Activity'? I t never did that before. Also when I do a Vo-J on an email to read the contents, it consistently stops right after the first word and then I have to use the VO and arrow keys to navigate around the text.
Any thoughts?

By chris R on Saturday, January 27, 2018 - 05:33

Hi,
If you have voice-over activities enabled, and you are in an app that doesn't have a specific activity set up it will default to the VoiceOver settings activity which is why it keeps saying this. On my old 2012 MacBook Pro I have found that using activities can cause up to a 10 second lag in speech and other problems so I recommend deleting all activities from the last tab in the VoiceOver utility. Older machines don't seem to cope with them well at all.

By Mani on Saturday, January 27, 2018 - 05:33

I do not have any activity set up in VoiceOver Utility. Does that mean it is going to keep saying 'Voiceover settings activity' because I do not have any activity set up for any app?

By chris R on Saturday, January 27, 2018 - 05:33

If you don't have any activities set up at all then I don't know why it keeps saying that. Strange. Maybe try backing up and doing a clean install of the OS or something similar.