VoiceOver focus jumpt to notification center

By PaulMartz, 5 February, 2025

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

In current MacOS Sequoia, I've noticed that VoiceOver focus sometimes sporadically jumps to the notification center.

Most recently, this happened while using the Mail app. I had a message open and had navigated to a link in the message body. I selected the link with VO+Space. My default browser did open the web page, but VoiceOver didn't announce it. Instead, it announced I was in the notification center and seemed to be prompting me to type to SIRI. It was very repeatable for several repetitions, and then the problem went away, and VoiceOver focus went to the browser as you would expect.

Is anyone else seeing this? Yes, I'm aware that VoiceOver focus jumps on iOS a lot, that issue has been around for years. I also know that VoiceOver focus jumps randomly when reading Wikipedia articles and other types of web content, In both of these cases, VoiceOver focus stays within the apps. But this behavior of jumping out of the app and into notification center seems to be new and quite different from other VoiceOver focus issues.

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Comments

By Levi Gobin on Tuesday, February 11, 2025 - 07:56

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

I have seen the issue you’ve mentioned when on a FaceTime call, and sadly the only workaround I can give you is to press command tab to switch to another app, then command tab back to your browser app of choice.
For me, whenever I would open another app from the dock or from a link in one app, the app I wanted to open would actually open, but voiceover would announce that I was in the FaceTime call window.

By TheBlindGuy07 on Tuesday, February 11, 2025 - 07:56

For Facetime this was already there before Sequoia. Not experiencing this anywhere else though.

By PaulMartz on Tuesday, February 11, 2025 - 07:56

Thanks Blind Guy. I didn't know this had been around in prior releases.

Now I'm getting something a lot like what Levi Gobin described.

I had recently used type to SIRI to change focus modes. Then I went to the dock and opened an app. The app opened, but VoiceOver didn't announce it. Instead, it told me, "notification center, window, SIRI."

So, it seems like both type to SIRI and facetime might be triggers. Maybe any activity in the notification center is enough to trigger it.

Sorry, don't have time to look deeper today, maybe next week. If anyone has any additional info, thanks.