Hello all.
I am really thankful to quite a few on this forum who have helped me get even more comfortable with some critical aspects of desktop navigation.
Now I need guidance on accessing and navigating output on a terminal.
I have to do a lot of work in Python and node.js and several times access a remote server through shell.
I also use git to push and pull source code and some tiems issue commit or similar commands like log.
But I am not able to consistently read the terminal.
When I use VO + arrows it some time reads the output but some times it just says full screen or tab bar and never reads the output.
I am also wondering why some times voice over automatically reads out everthing and sometimes nothing at all.
So can some one give me a complete set of instructions on how to read copy and paste from terminal?
I have to seldum read by character or words also.
Thank you in advance.
By kk_macker, 9 May, 2025
Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Comments
Reading from terminal
Unfortunately the Terminal experience on macOS is quite bad, and has been this way since at least when I went blind, which was over 11 years ago, however it's still possible to use and aside from TextMate and Xcode, Terminal is likely the application I spend the most time on.
To use the VoiceOver cursor in terminal, the first thing you need to do is focus the scroll area followed by focusing the shell view, then you can navigate text using VO+Arrows as usual. To get to the end of the output, press VO+Fn+Right, or just VO+End on a full-size desktop Magic Keyboard. To select text in Terminal, position the VO cursor on the first character or word that you wish to select, press VO+Enter, then move the text cursor to make the selection, which should result in an audio feedback indicating that you're dragging something, and finally press VO+Enter again to stop selecting. To copy the selected text press Command+C normally. An alternative to copying command output to the system clipboard is by just piping it to the
pbcopycommand-line tool, with thepbpastecommand outputting whatever is on the clipboard.As for why sometimes you hear output and sometimes you don't, this is related to Apple's accessibility implementation in Terminal itself. From what I gather what they do is to speak any text changes that happen within a relatively short amount of time, with the VO cursor ending up wherever Apple's algorithm assumes the output has ended, which is often a wrong assumption as it gets tricked when the same text repeats more than once in the buffer.
Can you explain me more abut the VO cursor?
So Can you give me exact keyboard steps to achieve consistent reading?
I generally do a shift + VO + down arrow and then attempt the reading which works fine most of the time.
But some times I forget the first step and then I am never able to read anything for that session.
So what you are suggesting seems to be a bit different than what I am doing, hence I am asking for exact keyboard commands.
Thank you.