Greetings all,
On both my Mac Air and MacBook Pro, latest MacOS, QuickNav is not working as it was in previous releases of MacOS. I am having the following issues:
1. There seems to be a lag time between switching QuickNav on and off. Several times when I type in text fields in Safari or chatting on Facebook with MenuTab app, I switch the QuickNav back on to move to the search button or send button or whatever other content of the page, and I do still find myself typing in the text field although I am sure I switched it on and the keyboard commands should perform their functions; b for button, l link and so on. Interestingly, I found waiting a couple of seconds is the solution for this although I assume QuickNav should work immediately without waiting at least as the case with previous MacOS releases.
2. In text fields in Safari where passwords are entered, QuickNav seems to be impossible to be switched back on unless I leave the Safari page and navigate a little n other windows.
3. VoiceOver seems to be very confusing when I navigate the text with QuickNav on or off. When QuickNav on and I am on line 5 of a text, I find when switching QuickNav off that cursor is somewhere else maybe at the bottom of the page, it does not synchronise with the location I was on with QuickNav on.
4. when I work on editing or typing texts in pages or TextEdit, I prefer switching QuickNav off to navigate the text more conveniently. Sometimes pressing only right or left arrow toggles QuickNav, this is very annoying when I tap or edit texts as it moves me somewhere other than the place where I was typing.
5. When QuickNav off, VoiceOver keeps announcing the misspelt word unless I highlight the word and activate the shortcuts menu, or I have to toggle QuickNav on, navigate the text then toggle it off. To put it differently, when there is a misspelt word in one line, nothing read of that line except the misspelt word unless doing one of the two above things.
6. When QuickNav off, up and down arrows navigate through lines. Sometimes when I press the up and down arrows VoiceOver announces the next and previous character.
I think I have more issues with QuickNav but can’t remember them. Maybe I will add more later.
Anyone faced any of the problems above and is there a workaround to overcome them?
By Maldalain, 24 January, 2017
Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Comments
Behavior in password fields
The behavior in password fields has been around for a long time. The issue is that Apple restricts access to keypresses when a password field has focus, in order to prevent apps from being able to snoop on what you type in the field. A consequence of this is that VoiceOver does not see your keypresses intended for Quick Nav operation, so Quick Nav does not work. This is something Apple could address in an update, but so far they haven't done anything.
I cannot really speak for the other items you mentioned, because I don't use my Mac as much as I used to. I do know that VoiceOver on the Mac, in general, has regressed significantly over the years, which I suspect is due to neglect of the operating system as a whole. Apple, with the extreme success of iOS, has put a huge amount of resources in that platform, which unfortunately has led to their other products getting far less attention. Numerous long-time Mac users have complained about this for some time now.