Every time I select text in Sequoia, I hear VoiceOver announce, "Writing Tools in Action menu." Is there any way to disable that announcement? For 99% of the times that I select text, I'm planning to do something other than run an AI check on my selection, and for the remaining 1%, I can figure it out. The announcement serves only to derail my train of thought and disrupt my workflow.
I already have VoiceOver verbosity set to Low.
Any help would be appreciated.
Comments
Turn off Apple Intelligence
It feels like a sledgehammer solution, but the only way to disable this message seems to be to turn off Apple Intelligence and restart. I'll hope this message goes away in a future Sequoia release.
Still present in 15.1.1
I didn't really expect a security release to address this problem, so no real surprise.
I did take the time to send an email to accessibility@apple.com and ask for help with eliminating this extraneous and distracting announcement. Hopefully they have a solution, or can get the developers to address the problem.
Yes this is indeed…
Yes this is indeed distracting.
Response from apple accessibility
Apple accessibility says: It is possible to disable Writing Tools in the Screen Time settings. Open System Settings and select Screen Time, select Content & Privacy, then turn on Content & Privacy Restrictions. Click Intelligence & Siri, then turn Writing Tools off.
Yes, that works, but ... I thought I made it pretty clear that I was trying to disable the announcement, not the writing tools menu itself. I replied to them and restated my request, specifically asking that this announcement be controlled by general verbosity or speech hints.
Anyone on the MacOS beta, please file a feedback enhancement request to this effect. Thanks.
Feedback Assistant suggestion filed
I filed this as a suggestion in Feedback assistant: FB16064900, asking that this announcement be disabled when VoiceOver verbosity is set to low, or that Apple add a new speech hint toggle to control this announcement.
But the more I think about it, it's a bug. When you select text with VoiceOver enabled, you expect to hear VoiceOver announce the selected text. This announcement suggests to the user that they have selected text that reads "writing tools in action menu."
The workaround is to press VO+F6 to hear what text has actually been selected.
Yoah but for your last point…
Yoah but for your last point, voiceover's been knon to be bad with queuing items and announcing them one by one in order.