a Guide to Verbosity Options in macOS VoiceOver

For macOS Sequoia 15.3

Intro

This guide discusses the many ways you can change verbosity options in macOS VoiceOver, and how they work.

The Purpose of This Guide

This guide is here to explain in great detail how the plethora of verbosity options can affect the way VoiceOver behaves.
If VoiceOver is or isn't speaking something you want it to, this guide will hopefully allow you to configure VoiceOver the way you want it to behave.

Speech and Braille Verbosity options

I've condensed these two tabs into their own section because they are basically identical.

Default Verbosity

In both of these tabs, there is an option called "Default Verbosity". This controls from a predetermined level how much output is spoken for each of the options in the Custom Verbosity table (see below). You can select from High, Medium, Low, or Custom. This will allow you to customize how an element is spoken (see below). These options can also be controlled with the verbosity rotor (Control+Option+V)

• High: All output is spoken.
• Medium: Most output is spoken.
• Low: Little to no unnecessary output is spoken.

Custom Verbosity Options, What they do, and how they affect VoiceOver.

For each option in this table, you can adjust how they behave from the same high, medium or low options as described above. You can also customize the way they behave.

item Order, what is that?

When customizing verbosity options, item order will allow you to select and reorder the way voiceover reads things like hyperlinks, buttons, checkboxes, etc. Here's what they all do: (These may be in a slightly different order than what you might find in VO Utility.)

• Name: The name of the object/item.
• status: Gives a status about the item, dimmed, visited, clickable, etc.
• Content: I'm not so sure on what this exactly does, because only a few options in the Verbosity table have this. My guess is that the content of a link would be the name (click here to download, for example), but then again, wouldn't that be the name of the link? This option only applies for links, text areas, and text fields. Shed more light on this in the comments if you know what it does.
• Type: This is the type of the element (link, button, checkbox, combobox, etc.). Disabling this will cause VoiceOver to say something like "Allow VoiceOver to be controlled with AppleScript, checked", rather than saying " Allow VoiceOver to be controlled with AppleScript, checked, checkbox.

Customizing the item order

You can press command+up/down arrows to adjust the position that VoiceOver reads out any of these options described above, and then press OK to apply your options.

Text Tab

The text tab contains several options to configure how VoiceOver reads different text elements, and some UI items.

• Punctuation: Control how much punctuation VoiceOver speaks. You can also create custom punctuation groups as well.
• Repeated Punctuation: controls how VO outputs repeated punctuation characters.
• Always spoken: speaks the exact number of repeated punctuation (for example, underscore underscore underscore underscore).
• Spoken with count: Speaks the number of repeated punctuation marks (for example, 11 underscore). On a side note, it should pluralize the punctuation mark, because eleven underscore is grammatically incorrect. It should be eleven underscores.
• spoken 3, 4, or 5 times: speaks that punctuation mark that many times. (for example, if "_______" is written, VoiceOver will say underscore underscore underscore if set to three times, or underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore if 5 times is selected.

Repeated Spaces: Speaks or plays a tone for repeated spaces, not tabs. VoiceOver does not play a tone for the amount of spaces, but only if they occur, while VoiceOver will say "Two Space" followed by the text. Not to be the grammar police (again), it should be Two Spaces. Come on, apple. Line indentation: You can have VoiceOver report indentation by beeping, or speaking the number of tabs or spaces, or speak an indentation level. You can customize this. While typing speak... This controls the way VoiceOver outputs text while you are typing. You can select between characters and words, characters, words, or nothing. When moving the curser... This controls how the insertion point moves in text editors. "Speak text the curser passes" is the default behavior for macOS and iOS. "Speak text to the right of the curser" will make the keyboard curser behave more like windows, or other operating systems. When text attributes change: Text attributes relate to the font, whether a piece of text is bold, etc. When it is set to "speak", VoiceOver will speak "Bold" before the text, or the font name and size, as well as underlines, and other text attributes. When encountering a misspelled word: This controls how VoiceOver outputs that a word is misspelled. When set to speak, VoiceOver will say "Misspelled" followed by the word. If set to change pitch, the word in question will be spoken with a lower pitch. When set to play tone, VoiceOver will play a tone when ever a misspelled word is encountered. When encountering a link/attachment: This controls the way VoiceOver reads links and imbedded attachments. When set to speak, VoiceOver will say "Link" or "attachment" when encountering the respected item. If set to change pitch, VoiceOver will speak the link/attachment with a lower pitch. If set to play tone, VoiceOver will play a click for links, and a metallic click for when attachments begin and end. Read Numbers as: This controls how VoiceOver reads numbers. In early macOS versions, the default was digits. Digits would read numbers as "There are five zero states in the US.", while words (the default in modern macOS) would say fifty. If set to digits, VoiceOver will read all digits of a number, such as one zero zero for one hundred. When reading a capital letter: This controls how VoiceOver reads capital letters. When set to speak, VoiceOver will say "Cap" in front of every letter, such as cap g. When set to play tone, VoiceOver will play a tone before speaking the letter. This might addd a slight delay when navigating really fast by letters. When set to change pitch, VoiceOver will say the letter with a higher pitch than the rest of the letters. When deleting text: This controls how VoiceOver says that you are deleting text. If set to speak, VoiceOver will say "Delete" followed by the character name, such as "Delete f". If set to play tone, VoiceOver will play a high pitch tone to indicate that you are deleting text.

Announcements tab

This tab allows you to control announcements that VoiceOver speaks

• Announce when mouse curser enters a window: This will announce when your mouse curser enters a window, and speak something like "entering (Window Name)".
• Announce when a modifier key is pressed: Announces which modifier keys you press, such as control, option, or command.
• Announce when the caps-lock key is pressed: This controls weather VoiceOver says "caps-lock on" or "caps-lock off" when the caps-lock key is pressed once (twice if your VO modifier is caps-lock).
• Speak header when navigating across a table row: Controls if VoiceOver should read a table header or not.
• Automatically speak text in dialog boxes: controls if Voiceover should read the text in a dialog when it appears.
• Speak zoom magnification changes: I'm not sure on what this does, but I'd assume that it has something to do with VO reading the magnification of something by the name.
• Speak VoiceOver curser magnification changes: Speaks changes made to the magnification of the VoiceOver curser.
• When Static text changes: Controls how VoiceOver outputs whenever text changes under the VoiceOver Curser. This could be a download progress in size, such as "42.0 GigaBytes of 42.4 Gigabytes remaining". When set to speak, VoiceOver would output whenever the text changed to be 42.1, 42.2, etc. If set to play tone, a ticking sound would be heard instead.
• When progress indicator changes: This controls how VoiceOver outputs progress bars. If set to play tone, a ticking sound would be heard. If set to speak, you would hear whenever the progress bar changes, such as 21%, 22%, 23%, 24%, etc.
• When number of rows change under VoiceOver curser: This controls how VoiceOver outputs when rows are added or removed in a table. When set to speak, you would hear the rows that are being added/removed, such as "5 rows added", or "2 rows removed". If set to play tone, a ticking sound would be heard for each update.
• when system dialogs are displayed: controls how VoiceOver outputs that there are system dialogs on the screen. If set to speak&play tone, VoiceOver will play a reminder tone every 30 seconds, and say the number of system dialogs displayed, such as "3 system dialogs displayed". If set to play tone, VoiceOver will just play the reminder tone, and not speak anything. Setting this option to do nothing will disable the reminder tones all together.
• speak size and position in: This controls if VoiceOver uses inches, feet, etc, or millimeters, centimeters, meeters, etc. There is a third option, "Points". I am not sure what this does because I haven't tested it.
• Speak text under mouse after delay: This controls if VoiceOver should speak text under the mouse. If this is checked and the delay is set to 0, There will be no delay, and this will behave like NVDA or other screen-readers.

Hints tab

This tab controls how hints are spoken by VoiceOver.

• Speak instructions for using the item in the VoiceOver curser: These are the main hints that VoiceOver speaks. For example, "You are currently on a table. To enter this table, press Control, Option, Shift, Down Arrow." For new VoiceOver users, these hints might be useful, but for more experienced VoiceOver users, these hints may become annoying.
• When an item has a help tag: when set to speak, VoiceOver speaks the help tag. You can also press VO+H to manually read the help tag. If set to speak notification: VoiceOver will just say that "this item has a help tag". These are help tags that certain apps may display as tooltips if you hover your mouse over the item. For an example, in logic pro, when focused on the button to add a midi plugin on a software instrument track, the following help tag is spoken: "MIDI Effect slot. Insert a MIDI effect. Click an occupied slot to open the plug-in." These hints aren't VoiceOver specific most times, but a general way to use the item in question.
• When an item has custom actions: If set to speak actions, speaks "Actions Available" after reading the item under the curser. If set to play sound, VoiceOver will play a sound to let you know that actions are available. These are custom actions that some apps, like finder may display for items. You can press Control+Option+command+Space to activate the actions menu. For an example of custom actions, if an item is on your desktop, you will be told that the item has actions available.
• When an item has more content: Speaks if items have more content to them, such as a line number in Xcode. The more content menu can be accessed with Control+option+command+/.
• You can also adjust the delay in which these hints will be spoken all the way from 0.4 seconds to 10.0 seconds.

You can also adjust if VoiceOver will Append phonetic pronunciation to single characters, like the default behavior when using iOS. These phonetic pronunciations will play when ever you navigate over any characters.

In closing,

I hope you have found this guide helpful. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out in the comments or any other way.