Up/Down Arrows Sometimes Move by Character

I believe this behavior is related to a wider problem where the Mac thinks another key is being pressed. On both my MBA and MBP, quiknav sometimes is turned on simply by my pressing the right arrow key by itself. Similarly, sometimes one computer or the other will think the command key is being depressed, as evidenced by what happens or doesn't happen when I press other keys. When turning VO off on my late 2016 MBP to reboot it (which, unfortunately, I have to do frequently because of bugs), it often thinks I'm holding down the spacebar and tries to evoke SIRI, even though I've only pressed the command key. Etc. Keys would also get ghost-pressed in Boot Camp on my MBA--either alt or Win. Years back, I had at least one Dell Lattitude with the same sort of issue. In all cases, finding out which key it thinks was pressed and rapid-pressing it a time or two unsticks it, which corresponds to why turning quicknav on and then off would work (again, sometimes I've actually found quicknav on, even though I'm quite certain I was just hitting the right arrow key through a document and was nowhere near the left). I think it is happening in the membrane or butterfly mechanism beneath the keyboard. I suspect it's not particulate matter, which I've also experienced, but rather strain on the chassis from either my palm or how the machine is resting. Whatever the case, phantom keystrokes among the command and cursor keys are a problem.

This bug is still present and always as disruptive when it happens.

This frustrates and disorientates me manytimes every day and it has been doing so ever since I started using VoiceOver on the Mac. I hate it.

A similar thing is when using left and right arrows it will sometimes move by word not letter as if I am holding down option. This is even more maddening as I am never sure how to fix it. I end up holding option or option and shift for a bit until it fixes itself. I hate this one even more. Text editing is so terrible on the Mac - it is like doing battle every time you have to do it. It should not be this bad.

I have a theory that might explain why this happens thanks to my experience with Vosh.

When the text selection changes, screen-readers on MacOS are notified through the accessibility infrastructure. Unfortunately since these notifications are not sent when the user tries to move the caret out of bounds as there's no actual selection change, screen-readers have to filter the user's keystrokes, check whether the focused keyboard element has selectable text, check whether the movement is legal, and either let the event through or emit an audio cue indicating that the cursor is at a boundary. This works in the majority of cases, with Terminal being a glaring exception which implements its own special accessibility notifications,, and I believe this is also how caret browsing is even possible on Safari when VoiceOver is enable.

On MacOS, input event tapping is done through an API called Quarts Event Services from CoreGraphics which is specifically designed with accessibility in mind (IOKit can be used to sniff input events at a much lower level but to my knowledge does not support filtering them). To ensure that accessibility applications have full control over input events, these events are filtered and passed to a handler in the accessibility application, which in turn is responsible for deciding what to do with them and return a response. However, to prevent an irresponsive accessibility application from accidentally making the whole system unusable by filtering all the input, Quartz disables any taps whose handlers do not respond after a short period of time. This means that if a screen-reader gets busy and doesn't respond immediately to an input event, its tap is disabled, resulting in loss of input events until the accessibility application resumes responding and re-enables the tap.

My theory is that VoiceOver sometimes gets way too busy interacting with the blocking accessibility infrastructure trying to decide how to handle the user's arrow keys, causing Quartz to disable its input tap leading to missed input events, potentially resulting in a situation in which it thinks that a key is still being pressed when in fact it isn't because it missed its key up event.

Assuming that my theory is correct then I can think of two possible workarounds to mitigate the problem that can be implemented in accessibility applications like screen-readers:

1. Process input events on a dedicated thread;
2. Clean up the current record of pressed keys when an input tap is disabled by Quartz.

Has anyone tried the following?

1. Disable the Left Arrow plus Right Arrow shortcut to toggle QuickNav.
2. Disable Single Key QuickNav (VO plus 'q').

Just an idea. . . 😇

That doesn't fix the problem. I think it is ever so slightly less annoying to deal with if you do disable the shortcut, but it definitely doesn't fix the problem.

I've seen this loads when editing text, but I've never noticed it happen elsewhere before... until just now. I was in the menu bar (VO+M) and hit W for Window, then down and it moved right (I think or left, but certainly didn't expand the menu). Confused the hell out of me.

But considering how often I notice this when editing text it has never done this elsewhere before. It even happened when trying to type this comment in, which is sadly not unusual.

Hi. I suspect that when this happens to me, it's because I had immediately beforehand pressed one key too many. I suspect that what happens is that I accidentally triggered screen rotation, so the next time it happens to you in any context, you might want to have someone sighted take a look at your screen. I have a Mac Studio and don't use a screen. If it is screen rotation, then the proper key command will rotate the screen back the way it's supposed to be, and the problem will be gone. What I'd love to learn is a key command that locks screen orientation so it never happens again.

I don't think you can rotate your screen with a shortcut on mac like you can on windows.

I think you may be on to something there though. I've experienced the same thing where I have to use the Vo keys to drill down into the apple menu.

It's just another example of voiceover being broken.

SNR has been really bad for me over the last week or so. Got the usual response from apple accessibility saying they're working on it. Obviously they're not very good at doing so.

Oh yes I remember that one on WiNdows when I could still see. The total panic you get when the screen suddenly turns on its side and you've no idea how it happened.

With the menu, can't remember how I fixed it if it was with the usual left+right combination or if I just cmd+tabbed back and forth.

This kind of bug is the thing that pushes me over the edge with the Mac if I'm having a bad day or am needing to do something quickly. Using a screen reader is hard enough if you are used to a visual world without also having to also be constantly fighting random behaviours that don't make sense. I have zero confidence that Apple will ever fix it either.

I don't know why this bug is minor? Whenever it happens, even rare, it's as disruptive as snr if not more. I'd like it to be in moderate. Just think about it two seconds, arrow keys not properly behaving like arrow keys when actively editing text? It seems more serious than that.
For me it's happened a lot in the last 3 months on both stable and unstable partition of my mac. Sometimes doing left or right arrow key only (while this bug is happening) would also trigger quick nav. Navigating by lines with the rotor is also sometimes but not always broken when this bug happens. And of course as of the latest build of sequoia this is still an issue.

This drives me totally insane all the time. And it often just happens outside text editing - sometimes things just won't work properly and it usually takes a while for me to remember to jam the cursor keys together to fix it. But this has been outstanding so long I don't have much faith in it being fixed.

This has just happened to me and is horrible as it disrupted my flow of note taking during class.

So That is ongoing for the last seven years and it persists up to the moment. Apple knows about it and has done and soon will not do anything to fix it. Do not tell me please about Apple being concerned about accessibility.

This happens to me when my typing gets sloppy and I accidentally press control or option or command keys in comination with the up or down arrow. You should have a sighted person check your screen when it happens. I suspect whatever it is causes screen orientation the change 90 degrees, meaning your up and down arrows are moving character by character on a line of text that has shifted from horizontal to vertical.

I find that I can usually fix the problem by pressing left and right arrow keys together. So I'm not convinced the screen is physically turned on its side or anything unless those keys do some kind of magic restore the screen orientation.

Not saying it definitely isn't caused by fat fingers on modifier keys. Whatever it is, it is seriously annoying.

Good to know it wasn't my slurring fingers. Just a coincidence, I suppose. Still, given mhy gift for messing up computers, maybe it was still my cursed magic fingers after all?

It seems that this bug is very easy to reproduce to a certain extent when doing cmd+s in textedit to save a new document when holding cmd after having pressed s. Then cmd tab two times one after the other solves the bug. Don't know if it means anything though.

Looking how old this bug has persisted makes me grin in someone's face who says Apple cares about accessibility.

iPhone mirroring, SNR... appname does not respond / is not responding while the app is perfectly fine, voiceover generally not having any unit test or regression test since apparently forever cause messages like finder busy in 2014 were common even then... Poorest support for QT among all the screen readers on the market, basic features broken overtime... And a complete lack of understanding of the reality of macos (specifically) voiceover users from apple..., text editing.

I am such an idiot. Why do I still get fooled by this? The number of times I've gone into Mail and been unable to find any messages. I'm going up and down but can only find one message. I quit mail and reopen. I look everywhere for some kind of filter I've accidentally enabled.

ANd then I remember. I press left and right arrows together and lo and behold there are all my emails.

I cannot express in words - at least not ones that are allowed on Applevis - how incredibly frustrating this bug is!!!

I've been encountering this a lot since yesterday on 15.3.1 stable in textedit... With vo-k all 4 arrows are named appropriately.

Oh, I have this constantly. It's one of those bugs you just get used to. That's the quality of apple products for you. It just doesn't work.

In my experience, what happens is that when I'm fast keyboarding and am pressing arrows, I accidentally simultaneously press one of the lower left keys (control, option, or command), which is what starts the problem leaving up and down arrows to only read characters instead of lines. What I suspect is that pressing control or command or whatever in conjunction with an arrow key changes the screen orientation 90 degrees. Thus, if you have text displayed, changing the screen orientation by 90 degrees and then using the up or down arrows will result in single letters being read out loud. The bug report at the top, however, indicates that the fix is simply turning quicknav on and off. I've tried that. It doesn't work for me. If it works for you, great.

If that was the case, then left and right arrows would also change behaviour - which they don't. Everything else behaves normally, Just up and down arrows. Also, pressing left and right arrows together fixes it - I would have thought if your theory was correct then you would need to press the same again to fix it.

But I guess it would be interesting to find out if there is some sort of visual difference on screen when it happens.

Sometimes pressing left and right arrows does not fix it, interestingly enough pressing left and right arrows with the down arrow does the trick. It is the weirdness of Apple.

Confirm. Or sometimes left and right only announce the last character on that line in textedit with the boundary reached sound, pressing down arrow fixes it one day, the next is option plus arrows, or yet quick nav on/off, or command tab and again to be back in the app. It's literally impossible to reproduce it the same way each time, the closest we can get is to cmd s in textedit to save a new document, then sometimes we have a weird version of this behaviour for a short amount of time.

This has always fixed it for me - it's somewhat depressing to read that it's not always the case. I turned the quick nav shortcut off specifically because of this problem. I originally thought it might be responsible, but it means I need to only press left+right once not twice.

There is so much in the Mac that defies logic. Like that bug with a number in square brackets was totally crazy - at least that one got fixed. But then there's plenty of other things that aren't important but are just strange. Like the other day using Option+T to speak the time randomly used the spoken word voice instead of VoiceOver for no reason until I turned VO on and off again. Or how it randomly decides to pronounce things differently out of the blue - like sometimes it pronounces periods as dots but only very rarely. I think it is just bodge on top of bodge and it's just riddled with race conditions where you might get onebehaviour or the other. I dread to think what the quality of the code base is like.

Hi everybody,

I played around with the problem on my keyboard a bit yesterday and discovered that pressing the option key with an arrow key does indeed cause the problem on my computer. I don't have a monitort connected, but if anyone does, and if they have sighted assistance handy, they might want to "see".

Meanwhile, I was delighted to discovered that the recommended work around, turning quicknav on and off, does indeed solve the problem, too.

Ah yes, one of many little irritations that are just there and have been forever. My remedy is to just mash the cursor keys, independently, till the problem goes away. That seems to work.

Unfortunately there is no fix for my other two major pet peeves, those being that navigating by line often just doesn't and the whole paragraph is just considered a line, and that you can't navigate by word using VO commands in any static text that contains certain symbols, notably =, without switching to characters first (by adding shift) to get over that hump. Utterly ridiculous, but there we are, sigh.

Why do we put up with this? Why?

It should be at least moderate rating, not minor.

My thoughts exactly. This and the honest struggles of using a Mack with VO is why I’m a linux user.

I don't know whether it's the option key or the double arrow key. But I'll tell you this. I use the exact same physical keyboard via a switchbox on my Linux system, and it never gets confused about whether a key is stuck down or not. Never misbehaves. So I suspect the problem is that MacOS is somehow dropping a key release event.

I am also strongly suspecting the option key to be responsible for this. I use it all the time when text editing and this would also explain why I get the problem all the way through the day. I can't quite manage to do it on demand though. I would love it if we could get this consistently reproducible.

Is it at all possible to unbind the default control plus arrow key shortcuts within macOS, and rebind those to work with text editing? I feel like this may be a workaround for the option key issue.