Have just discovered that I can launch VoiceOver in safe mode on Apple Silicon

By harry6116, 5 October, 2022

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

hey all,
I'm sure I'm not the 1st to have discovered this but I had to go into safe mode to check something and after following the instructions to get into safe mode, I decided to try and start VoiceOver and amazingly, it worked.
I remember the days on the Intel systems when sometimes even external sound cards would not be detected in safe mode and that most people were using braille displays to get things done.
You can certainly tell you are in safe mode because at the login screen, it will say safe boot at the top.

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Comments

By Ekaj on Thursday, October 27, 2022 - 04:50

Wow, good indeed. Hopefully I'll eventually be able to retrieve some lost music. Apparently not all of my music made it over when my PA and I were transferring stuff from my previous MacBook Air to this one. Additionally, there seems to be some stuff from a few years ago that I inadvertently deleted. Somebody told me that the trash folder for music on these things is separate from the regular trash folder, but my PA and I are a bit unclear regarding this. I guess a bit of investigation is in order!

By KE7ZUM on Thursday, October 27, 2022 - 04:50

are you sure it's the safe mode when holding down the shift key? if it is that is very good news, if it is not we still will not be able to access the bios etc while holding down that key, btw holding down tha tkey and waiting for about half an hour then rebooting will clear some caches.

By harry6116 on Thursday, October 27, 2022 - 04:50

You can verify you are in safe mode at the login prompt, by going to the top of the screen, you will hear safe boot

By Chris on Thursday, October 27, 2022 - 04:50

This is great and not surprising, considering Apple now controls essentially every aspect of the hardware. I've also been told the boot menu talks using VoiceOver, meaning it's now possible to independently choose an external disk to boot the machine from if your settings allow it. As far as I know there really isn't a user accessible BIOS on any Mac model, just the stuff you get in macOS Recovery. Obviously it has some kind of BIOS and presumably a bootloader, but it's not really accessible to configure things unlike a standard laptop or desktop.

By harry6116 on Thursday, October 27, 2022 - 04:50

As long as your external drive cut the mustard in terms of the configuration, you can absolutely pick drives to boot from. I have tried it.

By Sebby on Thursday, October 27, 2022 - 04:50

Now you can pass Apple's certifications independently, I believe. This was a block in the past.