Since upgrading to Ventura 13.1, I have noticed that, whenever I press VO+F2 twice, the first two entries in the Window Chooser menu are always, "System Dialog - - untitled -". This also appears in the Window Chooser.
If I select one of these windows, VoiceOver tells me, "In window content is empty". After hearing that message, VoiceOver navigation commands have no effect. VO+F1 tells me focus is in the previous app I was using, but clearly something else has grabbed focus, and only by using Command+Tab am I able to switch out of this mysterious dialog and back to my previous app.
Rebooting does not fix this issue. The notification center is empty.
Has anyone else encountered this? I'd love to get rid of it.
Comments
Restarting VO
I have not encountered this, but I'm wondering if you have the no dialog issue. When your VO get's stuck, try turning off VO off and back on and see if it reads.
Re: Restarting VO
Thanks for letting me know you're not seeing this. Apparently, it is one of dozens of issues that can only be reproduced on my Mac. LOL.
After restarting VoiceOver, the situation is unchanged. The mysterious system dialog still has focus and VO navigation commands do nothing.
VO+F4 should describe the object with keyboard focus. If I press this, VoiceOver says, "nothing has keyboard focus".
Reset NVRAM is also no help
It's a 2018 Intel Mac Mini. I exited out of all apps, then rebooted with Command+Option+P+R and still have the two mysterious system dialogs listed in the Window Chooser.
My sighted spouse says there are no windows open on my desktop.
Command+Q
Command+Q gets rid of the mystery dialogs. I'm surprised I didn't try this before, Duh!
However, after a reboot, they are back, so I need to switch to them and Command+Q after every reboot. I'm still interested in getting to the root of this. I'd like to get rid of them once and for all.
Login items
I don't have this issue, but wonder if it could possibly be related to a login item, especially because the dialogs appear each time you boot the Mac, and you are able to get rid of them with Command-Q. While it may be tedious, you may want to remove all your login items to see if this is indeed the source of the issue. If it is, try adding them back one at a time to determine which one the dialogs are coming from.
HTH
My Thoughts Exactly
Some LaunchAgent. 1Password exhibits this behaviour for me, sometimes. Have a look-see if you turned on some option in an app to spawn at start, like a keyboard launcher or password manager, which could be expected to avoid the Command-Tab list, but not the VO app and window choosers.
Thanks. I've got a solution.
It was a login item, an app for a cloud storage service called Sync.com. I'll work with that company to address the issue.
xdd.
you always when you have a weird window, press cmd+q, it always helps.