macOS Golden Gate 27 Beta 4 Megathread

Let me tell you my SIRI experience. Before I enter a rambling bug report, I'd appreciate it if someone would tell me how it's supposed to work.

One,in Spotlight, if I say "Tell me a joke," Spotlight opens the Music app to a song called 'Tell Me A Joke." I went into System Settings > Spotlight and disabled the Music app. Now, Spotlight tells me "no results."

Two, there is no keyboard shortcut for Type To SIRI. When it's enabled, the only way to invoke SIRI is to go to Menu Extras. After I type my prompt, SIRI doesn't speak the response. I must navigate to it with VoiceOver.

Three. If I ask SIRI how to make SIRI speak responses when using Type to SIRI, SIRI tells me "I found this on the web" and points me to some incorrect or non-authorative articles, such as one that advises me to set spoken responses to Always (like SIRI thinks I'm on an iPhone), or a reddit article advising me to turn up the volume.

Four. When I go to System Settings > SIRI, I see the following.
* A Requests button. When I click it, it takes me to an empty window.
* A language button that works normally
* A voice button that works normally
* A Responses button. Lets me specify Prefer Spoken and show SIRI responses. All are set correctly.
* A Turn Off SIRI button.
Every indication is that SIRI is on and should be listening. Nothing tells me otherwise. Though I am a little concerned about that empty Requests window.

Five. When I speak a SIRI prompt into my microphone, I get no indication that SIRI is listening. If there is a visual response or indicator onscreen, there is no audio or VoiceOver indication.

That's essentially my experience too. It's sadly yet another example of Apple dropping the ball on accessibility. Let me know what the feedback number and categories are when you send your report, and I'll send another one referencing yours. I doubt it'll do any good, but maybe the more people they hear from, the more likely they'll deem us worthy enough to listen to and prioritize.

Afvanced SIRI capabilities non-functional after beta 3 clean install
FB23905409

The content is basically a paraphrase of my previous comment, with emphasis on the empty Requests window, which (I suspect) is the primary symptom of concern.

Open the window chooser. Is anyone besides me seeing "System Dialog - - untitled - from MenuBarAgent" at the top of the list? Selecting it takes focus to a dialog, and if I fiddle around with it enough, I find my focus is in the menu extras.

Not sure what the point of this is, or even how to report it.

Do you have any third-party applications in your menu extras? Also, is Siri in your menu extras? Just out of curiosity, have you tried going into the system settings and removing Siri from the menu extras?
I'm just wondering if that's what that strange dialogue is, and if removing Siri from the menu extras would get rid of it?
Just food for thought. 😇

There was a strange system dialog that was always in the Window Chooser in betas 1 and 2 that took you to the Control Center, but it disappeared with beta 3. I have no idea what it was or what your current issue is.

I set up beta 3 as a new Mac. That system dialog has always been there, right from the first time I booted Golden Gate, and long before I put anything in the menu extras. It seems to be an inherent mis-feature of Golden Gate. So I'm kind of surprised no one else here is experiencing it.

I can understand why sighted people might not experience it. Maybe it's an entirely invisible window. If so, the only way anyone would know about it is if they use VoiceOver and bring up the window chooser.

I'll file a feedback report. It might be a symptom of some underlying issue.

In other news, I filed a feedback report regarding a Mail client smart mailbox issue and got a nearly immediate response from Apple requesting more information. I wish their VoiceOver team were as responsive.

@PaulMartz, you are definitely not alone in seeing this. I reported what appears to be the same issue to Apple during the first Golden Gate developer betas.

On my system, VoiceOver’s Window Chooser contained a window named something like “System Dialog - - untitled - from MenuBarAgent”. Entering it placed VoiceOver in what appeared to be a duplicate representation of the menu extras area. I could navigate through the same number of elements as I had menu extras in the right-hand side of the menu bar, but the elements in this duplicate container were generally unlabeled and VoiceOver only made its navigation click sound.

The normal menu extras navigation shortcut, VO-M-M, continued to work correctly and exposed the real menu bar items with their proper labels. That was one of the reasons I concluded that this extra dialog was unintended rather than a new way to access menu extras.

I also attached a screenshot to my report. Visually, there was no visible dialog or window on the desktop, but when VoiceOver focus was inside this ghost dialog, the visible accessibility focus ring appeared around the actual menu extra icons. This strongly suggested that an internal MenuBarAgent container was being exposed to VoiceOver as a top-level system dialog/window, when it should only have been exposed as part of the menu bar accessibility hierarchy.

My report is:

**FB23491090 — “VoiceOver detects ghost ‘System dialogue box’ from MenuBarAgent in Window Chooser (duplicate, unlabeled Menu Extras container)”**

@Brian, I do not think this is caused by Siri or third-party menu extras. I saw it with my normal set of menu extras, but the behaviour looked like a system-level duplication of the entire menu extras container rather than a problem with one specific item. @PaulMartz also reports seeing it on a newly set-up system before adding his own extras, which supports that theory.

The good news is that I am now on macOS Golden Gate 27 developer beta 4, and the actual “System Dialog - - untitled - from MenuBarAgent” window no longer appears in my Window Chooser. VoiceOver still presents the “System Dialogs” category there, even though it contains no windows, which may itself be slightly odd, but the inaccessible ghost dialog is gone for me.

@PaulMartz, since you mention that you are on beta 3, it may be worth checking beta 4 when you install it. I would still encourage you to file your own report, particularly if you can reproduce it on beta 3 or later. Referring to **FB23491090** may help Apple connect the reports.

Thanks Cliff. I submitted another report and referenced yours. I mentioned the dialog was present immediately after a clean install of beta 3 and persists in beta 4.

No, I ain't Steve.
But did they unhide the developer options we have since tahoe 26.0 dev beta 1?
See my comment in the GG beta 1 thread, as I will not repeat myself for more than a year on the literally same issue.

This is incredibly confusing. My experience is now somewhat different after upgrading to beta 4 and resetting my Mac. I'm using an M4 2024 Mac mini with 16 GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD.
I can type to Siri using Spotlight and it works, but as you said and I've observed before, it doesn't speak, meaning I have to use VoiceOver to read the answer. Activating Siri from menu extras only works if I have a USB headset with microphone connected, in which case it plays the chime and I can begin talking. If I don't have a microphone connected, it seems to briefly open something, then immediately close. As far as I can tell, the main thing that's broken here is the lack of spoken responses when using type to Siri. I also don't have the requests button in System Settings>Siri, but I can open the Siri app and read all my previous chats as well as start a new one.

I really hope this gets addressed. Siri is working fine for me other than not speaking the responses for typed queries. Using Spotlight seems to be an acceptable solution, and I hear a sound to tell me when voice activation begins.

Yeah, I've also submitted a feedback regarding this one as I said in the feedback. I indicated that it should do so given that the messages app does, and therefore I believe that this app should also do so. It actually does auto announce things like researching, looking, and so on, just not the final result message I was hoping it would be fixed in public beta too, but it doesn't look like it is

I'm just really curious to find out how stable the latest beta is of Golden Gate especially with voiceover.
I've been running iOS 27 quite successfully for a bit of testing but I was just curious to see how bumpy the Mac was.

These betas seem extremely stable, but you of course run them at your own risk. I imagine a lot of this comes down to them being focused on bug fixes, though VoiceOver sadly doesn't seem to be included. I was really hoping this would be the year when the developers would seriously sit down and start polishing the experience, but no such luck. All the existing bugs you've come to know seem very much alive and well. I don't expect this to change even under the upcoming CEO, so the Apple products I have right now will more than likely be the last ones I ever purchase, but only time will tell.

I installed the public beta 2 on my M 1 Macbook Air when it released. This morning I discovered that there is a slider for adjusting the audio ducking amount in Voiceover Utility>Sounds tab. Well thought adition after the last years's Iphone update.

I think this is a long-standing bug. But I'm not sure. It feels familiar.

Open a message from your inbox, one with blank lines between paragraphs, as is common.

Down arrow through the body text.

Expected behavior: When arrowing to a blank line, VoiceOver will say nothing or announce :new line."
Observed behavior: VoiceOver reads the entire message body from beginning to end, if you let it.

Workaround: There's no way to make VoiceOver announce "new line" in this situation that I'm aware of. Assuming you're aware that the line is actually blank and you're encountering a bug, you can just down arrow to the next non-blank line.

I've got a mail message open right now and wonder if it's worth doing a screen recording and submitting a feedback report.

I see the public betas are now out. But, for what it's worth...

Mail incorrectly reads entire message body, FB24036156 — macOS

I made a screen recording and attached it.

I'm on public beta 2.

This morning I went to open a Numbers spreadsheet and was informed there was no app to open that file. Quite a shocker, as I installed developer beta 3 as a new Mac and have used Numbers regularly during the Golden Gate release cycle.

But the upgrade from developer beta 4 to public beta 2 seems to have mysteriously and silently removed the Numbers app.

Yeah.

After a brief few minutes of panic, testing and verifying that Pages and Keynote were still available, I went out to the App Store and re-downloaded Numbers.

I know a lot of you have said Golden Gate feels pretty stable. Well, between my SIRI weirdness, unexplained behaviors in Mail, and now the unexpected deletion of an app I depend on, I can't say that I feel the same.

Fairly recently, Apple moved all their apps like Pages, Numbers etc to the app store. So if you opened Pages it would nag you to go install it elsewhere. Then you'd end up with 2 copies of Pages and have to find the right one to delete. Maybe with Golden Gate they are making this process more compulsory. If it possible you had already switched Pages etc over to the app store version but not Numbers?

Paul, reading your comments on here I am feeling a little despondent. I had been under the false illusion that Golden Gate was goin gto be the version that was finally going to bring a round of bug fixes that we have all been crying out for. It sounds to me like it has fixed nothing and added more issues which is quite upsetting.

I don't know if this is just a blind thing, but I think there is a tendency to judge a new OS by how many new bugs there are. If there are only a few and they are tolerable then we all seem pleased even though the overall experience is worse.

Given the abundance of AI coding tools - including those exposed by xcode - you would think Apple would be able to burn through some long-standing issues.

I'm running whatever version of Pages and Keynote came with developer beta 3. Numbers is the only app that vanished; the other two work as expected.

It seems quite worrisome that Apple couldn't find a more elegant way to upgrade Numbers than to silently delete the app and leave it to the user to divine that they should visit the App Store and redownload.

Just an FYI, Numbers is not shipped with macOS, neither does Pages or Keynote. They are, however, installed on every new mac purchased since back in the day.

I suspect this is just part of the transition - maybe they got rid of Numbers from the default install and were going to do the others once they got some feedback. But who knows with Apple.

I agree that it isn't very intuitive to move over. I've done it for Pages and Numbers and had to google it both times.

My Mac Mini is two years old, with Tahoe installed on the internal SSD.

I bought an external SSD and installed Golden Gate developer beta 3, setting it up as a new Mac, not inporting any apps or setting from my existing installation. Pages, numbers, and keynote were all functional.

If they didn't come with MacOS, then... You mean Golden Gate is finding them in my Tahoe install and executing them from my internal SSD? Lordy, how many other old settings and issues is Golden Gate dragging over from Tahoe?

I'm surprised by how quiet this topic is, any bugs fixed? Anything at all? I asked someone a while ago and he said this beta feels like a massive leap in performance which is interesting, is that true?
I also wonder if no bug was really fixed? While yes things are getting buggier I kinda doubt nothing was fixed at all.

Hi,

Don't be expecting any bug fixes until beta 5/3. Those should be released this week to both developers in public beta testers.