Apple has today released macOS Sequoia 15.1, bringing the first set of Apple Intelligence features to Macs with Apple Silicon outside of Mainland China and the European Union. This update also brings accessibility improvements, as well as some new bugs for VoiceOver users.
In macOS 15.0, iPhone Mirroring was completely inaccessible with VoiceOver. Our testing, as well as reports from the community, suggests that Apple has made some progress towards making iPhone Mirroring accessible, but that much more work needs to be done.
Specifically, we are aware of the following issues with this feature:
- When attempting to navigate the App Switcher of a mirrored iPhone using VoiceOver on macOS, the names of open apps are not consistently spoken, with many apps simply reported by VoiceOver as “Active,” with no indication what app is in focus. This makes the App Switcher very difficult, if not impossible, to use with VoiceOver.
- When encountering a picker on a mirrored iPhone using VoiceOver on macOS, it is not possible to interact with or select items in that picker. For example, the page picker on the iOS Home Screen, and others like it throughout iOS, are recognized by VoiceOver on macOS as sliders that can be interacted with; however, no items are visible when attempting to do so, with VoiceOver on macOS simply playing the “Boundary reached” sound. In some cases, you may be able to adjust the picker by focusing on it and choosing "Increment" or "decrement" from the actions menu (accessed by pressing VO-Command-Space).
We strongly encourage Apple to prioritize making this core macOS Sequoia feature both fully accessible and a best-in-class user experience for everyone.
Our experience is that the following accessibility issues have also been addressed in macOS Sequoia 15.1:
- VoiceOver no longer crashes during regular use on Intel-based Macs.
- VoiceOver now speaks the names of shared groups in the Passwords app.
- Pressing VO-J on an account in the Passwords app now reliably works to jump to the scroll area displaying information for that account.
- It is now possible to click the "Page menu" and "show Reader appearance customization options" buttons in Safari using standard VoiceOver commands.
Additionally, while not a bug that our team was actively tracking, community feedback indicates that Apple has also resolved an issue with MathML content when browsing using the "Announce Groups" setting.
We are currently aware of the following new bugs in macOS Sequoia 15.1 not related to iPhone Mirroring:
- When receiving an alert, such as an alarm, timer, or Calendar notification, it is not possible to navigate to it via VoiceOver’s Notifications menu, with VoiceOver reporting “No notifications available” when pressing VO-N, even when the alert is displayed in Notification Center.
- When focusing on a message in the Messages app and pressing VO-Command-Space to reveal the actions menu, there are a number of individual tapback reactions, in addition to the redundant “Tapback” and “Tapback details” actions.
With our small team, it's impossible to test every device, configuration, app, and use case. We can't claim our lists of new and resolved bugs are comprehensive or that our assessments are infallible. Some issues may manifest only under specific conditions. You likely won't experience every bug. Also, expect to encounter problems not listed that we missed in our testing. Please let us know in the comments if you encounter any other improvements or new bugs introduced in these updates. Community feedback is invaluable in helping us keep this page up-to-date and accurate.
macOS Sequoia 15.1 release notes
This update introduces the first set of features powered by Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that unlocks powerful new ways to communicate, work, and express yourself, all while protecting your data with an extraordinary step forward for privacy in AI. This release also includes drag and drop support for iPhone Mirroring and other features, bug fixes, and security updates for your Mac.
Apple Intelligence (Mac with M1 and later)
- Writing Tools
- Writing Tools are available nearly everywhere you type, allowing you to rewrite, proofread, and summarize text right in the app you're working in
- Rewrite suggests different versions of your text so you can choose which combination of flow and wording you like best
- Proofread lets you view suggested improvements to what you're writing, like grammar fixes and language refinements
- Summarize allows you to select text wherever you're writing and generate a high-quality summary
- Siri
- A new look and feel includes a glowing light that wraps around the edge of your screen, animates responsively to the sound of your voice, and lets you keep scrolling or typing while you talk to Siri
- Type to Siri when you don't want to speak a request out loud
- Richer language understanding enables Siri to follow along if you stumble over your words or change your mind mid-sentence
- Conversational context is maintained over the course of a session, so you can refer more naturally to something you said in a recent request or something Siri mentioned in a recent response
- Product knowledge helps you get answers to thousands of questions about the features and settings on your Apple products
- Voice enhancements make Siri sound more natural, expressive, and clear
- Photos
- Memory movies can be created by describing the story you want to see
- Photos search lets you find photos and videos simply by describing what you're looking for
- Clean Up removes distractions in your photos
- Notifications
- Notification summaries make it easy to catch up on your notifications with a glanceable summary of the most important information
- Reduce Interruptions is a new Focus that ensures the most urgent notifications get through to you while silencing potential distractions
- Additional Features
- Smart Reply in Mail and Messages help you quickly respond to messages with suggested responses
- Transcription summaries in Notes give you an intelligently created summary of the transcript from your audio recording
iPhone Mirroring
- Drag and drop support lets you seamlessly move files, photos, videos, and more between your Mac and iPhone
AirPods
- Hearing Protection feature helps users minimize exposure to loud environmental noise across listening modes (available in the United States and Canada)
- Features require AirPods Pro 2 with firmware version 7B19 or later. All features may not be available for all countries or regions, for more information visit: https://apple.com/airpods-pro/feature-availability/
This update also includes the following improvements and bug fixes:
- Option to automatically download and install games and apps to an external disk drive
- Game Center friend invites can be sent directly from the Contacts app and Friend Suggestions and receivers can see the invites in the inbox in Settings
How to update
To install macOS Sequoia 15.1, choose System Settings from the Apple menu, select General in the table, click Software Update in the scroll area, and click the Update Now button to begin the update process. If other updates are available, you can click "More info" to see details about them and select specific updates to install.
We'd love to hear your thoughts after you've had a chance to install this update. What new features do you find most useful? Are there any changes you don't like? Please share your feedback in the comments below. Let us know what Apple got right with this release and where you think there's still room for improvement.
Comments
YAY! I am mentioned as …
YAY! I am mentioned as "community". Joke aside, many thanks to apple for having solved the mathml bug so quickly after it was reported. Although the previous workaround existed, I learned about it two weeks after and at that point the impact was such that I was seriously considering putting it on sale as studying was becoming exponentially harder. But for mathjax and its copy as latex feature this period would have been even more difficult. Apple, 11/10 on this one.
As a side note I will again put the emphasis on the importance of reporting accessibility bugs to apple directly through feedback assistant and or [email protected]. Even more important is the fact to be civilized at every step, even, and especially, if this is a high impact critical bug that negatively impact your life whether as a student or else. The more apple (and any company for that matter) is aware of the real impact of a specific bug, the quicker (relatively) they will be at solving it as shown in this current example.
Thank you for the applevis community as well for having this place where we can share information and find workarounds together.
music app content area inaccessible
Since late in the 15.1 beta cycle, the content area of the music app is no longer accessible using voiceover. I've verified that the content is still being displayed using VOCR, but voiceover no longer sees it when interacting with the content area of the app, at least for apple-music content.
FB15498602
Is there an alternative way to engage with notifications?
Now that vo+n no longer allows VoiceOver to navigate to the notifications area, I wonder if anyone has found a work-around?
A question?
Does anyone know if Apple plans on ever introducing screen recognition to macOS? Seems like that would help fix at least some of these kind of issues.
@Brian I sent a feedback…
@Brian
I sent a feedback about that last week.
Engaging with notifications
While VoiceOver's notifications menu does not work in this release, notifications can still be viewed in Notification Center (accessed by pressing VO-O).
didnt expected these bugs for sure.
I have noticed 2 bugs so far:
1. reading word by word is broken. I have tried this in web pages to read using option+right aro, its not working.
2. sometimes keybord help wont get stopped even you press VO K. I need to scrubb trackpad to come out of this.
The word by word on the web…
The word by word on the web in some area of a page was broken already when I got Ventura to my first mac.
My Experience
So, it seams Mac Voiceover is getting similar to it's IOS counterpart in some areas.
But apple Music and Apple tv home pages navigations are broken and this is a serius bug. I can't navigate thrue my Apple music home page! Are you kidding apple? Other then that, I don't have any show stopper bugs, actually it's getting smoother for me with every release. But this Apple music bug... Really?
Keyboard Help
Oh I found that keyboard help bug too.
I upgraded from Sonoma 14.6.1 to Sequoia yesterday, and thought I'd have fun with the new VoiceOver tutorial. Then I got to the keyboard help part and couldn't get out for like 20 minutes. I think I pressed the Touch ID button or something and got out of it, but yeah. That was pretty weird.
Otherwise though, that tutorial really is neat.
Apple Intelligence Wait List
I updated yesterday, and earlier this morning I put myself on the waiting list for these new AI features. I'm wondering if that means they're slowly being rolled out? In any case, this seems like yet another good update for both my devices. As usual I have yet to play around with everything but it'll be interesting to see the new AI stuff in action. I currently am using an iPhone 14, so will not be able to take advantage of all of it.
Thanks Tyler, I totally forgot about vo+o
Thanks @tyler for the vo+o tip to access notification center. I've gotten so used to vo+n to access the notification menu that I forgot all about vo+o. That said, I'm finding that VO keeps wanting to jump into the widgets grid if I try to navigate through more than one notification. I'm not sure if this is a new bug though, if this has existed for a while, or if I have something else going on that might be specific to my own setup. Either way, thank you for the vo+o tip. I'm sure that will help others as well who may have become dependent on the notification menu.
exiting keyboard help broken
yeah, I've submitted a bug report to apple about the keyboard-help problem.
FB15603481