Voice Control Disabling System Services After Reboot
I recently learned from Apple Accessibility Support that the issue I’m experiencing with Voice Control is now affecting multiple users. When I first reported the problem, I appeared to be the first case—what you might call “patient zero.” I have provided extensive feedback and system logs, but now that the issue is more widespread, I have been told that I will not be informed of the cause or notified directly when a fix is found. Instead, updates will be released as solutions are identified, and support staff will not necessarily know the details of the underlying problem.
To summarize my experience: after enabling Voice Control and rebooting my MacBook Pro (14.2-inch, M4 chip), critical Apple system services—including FaceTime, Apple Music, and News—stop functioning. Dictation remains available, but it is not as accurate or effective for my needs as Voice Control. I rely on these accessibility features daily due to my disability and cerebral palsy, and this issue has persisted for over five months.
I have always valued contributing to the developer program and supporting Apple’s efforts to improve accessibility. However, I find it discouraging that there is no clear communication about the status of this issue or its resolution. My theory is that there may be a hardware interaction—perhaps between the neural engine and the new Wi-Fi chip—rather than a purely software problem.
I understand that some information may not be immediately available, but I believe that users who rely on accessibility features should be kept informed about major issues and their progress toward resolution. I appreciate the dedication of the accessibility and development teams, and I want to continue supporting Apple’s mission of inclusion. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Donald Spencer Kirby
Dayton, Ohio
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Hi,
I've wrapped AVRoutePickerView in SwiftUI using pretty much the code given here, with a few changes:
func makeUIView(context: Context) -> UIView {
let routePickerView = AVRoutePickerView()
// Configure the button's color.
//routePickerView.delegate = context.coordinator
//routePickerView.backgroundColor = .secondarySystemBackground
routePickerView.tintColor = .accent
routePickerView.activeTintColor = .accent
// Indicate whether your app prefers video content.
routePickerView.prioritizesVideoDevices = false
return routePickerView
}
I commented out routePickerView.delegate = context.coordinator because it doesn't compile; context.coordinator is of type Void and I'm not sure how to fix that. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with the issue.
Anyway, this works fine without VoiceOver; if I tap the button, I get the AirPlay popover. But in VoiceOver, if I select the button and double-tap, nothing happens… it just reads the button's accessibilityLabel again. How can I get the AirPlay popover to show in VoiceOver?
We are unable to programmatically enable AppleScript automation for VoiceOver on macOS 15 (Sequoia)
In macOS 15, Apple moved the VoiceOver configuration from:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.VoiceOver4/default.plist
to a sandboxed path:
~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.VoiceOver/Library/Preferences/com.apple.VoiceOver4/default.plist
Steps to Reproduce:
Use a macOS 15 (ARM64) machine (or GitHub Actions runner image with macOS 15 ARM).
Open VoiceOver:
open /System/Library/CoreServices/VoiceOver.app
Set the SCREnableAppleScript flag to true in the new sandboxed .plist:
plutil -replace SCREnableAppleScript -bool true ~/Library/Group\ Containers/group.com.apple.VoiceOver/Library/Preferences/com.apple.VoiceOver4/default.plist
Confirm csrutil status is either disabled or not enforced.
Attempt to control VoiceOver via AppleScript (e.g., using osascript voiceOverPerform.applescript).
Observe that the AppleScript command fails with no useful output (exit code 1), and VoiceOver does not respond to automation.
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
Tags:
macOS
Accessibility
App Sandbox
AppleScript
We have a requirement to manage the shortcuts and hotkeys in our application, and have it to be intuitive and support multi-lingual fully. The understanding that we have currently is that most universal shortcuts and hotkeys on MacOS/iOS are expressed using English/Latin characters’ – and now, when a ‘pure foreign language physical or virtual keyboard’ is the ‘input device’ – we are unclear how the user would invoke such a hotkey.
Now, considering cases where other language keyboards have no Latin characters, in these environments, managing shortcuts and hotkeys becomes a rather difficult task. Taking a very simple example, the shortcut for Printing a page is Command/Control + 'P'. This can be an issue on Non English character keyboards like Arabic, where not only are there no letters for P, there is also no equivalent phonetic character as well, since the language itself does not have it.
Also – when we are wanting customizability of a hotkey by the user, how would the user express ‘which is the key combination for a given action they want to perform’.
So, based on these conditions, in order to provide the most comprehensive and optimal experience for the user in their own language, what is it that Apple recommend we do here, for Hotkeys/Shortcuts support in Pure Languages
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
Tags:
InputMethodKit
Internationalization
Shortcuts
Localization
Hi I'm planning to make macos App and distribute to MacOS App Store.
The question is should i make force update when update is needed.
The reason why I want to make this feature is I don't want to make user use previous version of app.
My plan is like this.
when app needed update, make user reach special page that describe why update is needed and set a button that can download new version of app.
the download will be automatically doing at background don't need to visit app store.
I search several forums and gpt but there is no positive reply of this..
so finally i make a post to know is there no way to make this.
Thank you!
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
This was working a few days ago, but it has since stopped and I can't figure out why. I've tried resetting TCC, double-checking my entitlements, restarting, deleting and rebuilding, and nothing works.
My app is a sandboxed macOS SwiftUI LSUIElement app that, when invoked, checks to see if the frontmost process is Terminal, then tries to get the frontmost window’s title.
func
getFrontmostWindowTitle()
throws
-> String?
{
let trusted = AXIsProcessTrusted()
print("getFrontmostWindowTitle AX trusted: \(trusted)")
guard let app = NSWorkspace.shared.frontmostApplication else { return nil }
let appElement = AXUIElementCreateApplication(app.processIdentifier)
var focusedWindow: AnyObject?
let status = AXUIElementCopyAttributeValue(appElement, kAXFocusedWindowAttribute as CFString, &focusedWindow)
guard
status == .success,
let window = focusedWindow
else
{
if status == .cannotComplete
{
throw Errors.needAccessibilityPermission
}
return nil
}
var title: AnyObject?
let titleStatus = AXUIElementCopyAttributeValue(window as! AXUIElement, kAXTitleAttribute as CFString, &title)
guard titleStatus == .success else { return nil }
return title as? String
}
I recently renamed the app, but the Bundle ID has not yet changed. I have com.apple.security.accessibility set to YES in the Entitlements file (although i had to add it manually), and a NSAccessibilityUsageDescription string set in Info.plist.
The first time I ran this, macOS nicely prompted for permission. Now it won't do that, even when I use AXIsProcessTrustedWithOptions() to try to force it.
If I use tccutil to reset accessibility and apple events, it still doesn't prompt. If I drag my app from the build products folder to System Settings, it gets added to the system TCC DB (not the user DB). It shows an auth value of 2 for my app:
% sudo sqlite3 "/Library/Application Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db" "SELECT client,auth_value FROM access WHERE service='kTCCServiceAccessibility' OR service='kTCCServiceAppleEvents';"
com.latencyzero.<redacted>|2
<redactd>
I'm at a loss as to what went wrong. I proved out the concept earlier and it worked, and have since spent a lot of time enhancing and polishing the app, and now things aren't working and I'm starting to worry.
I can’t screenshot using assistive touch after i install ios 26 beta 2
My team is designing an app for retail associates that need to share managed iPads. We keep the app in Guided Access mode on our login app until an auth token is obtained. Then the iPad is opened for general use. Upon signout we need to re-enter guided access mode and we can do this via manual signout easily. But with idle signout, ie after 60 minutes of inactivity, we need to be able to make a call from the background (in a locked state even) and sign out the user, clear the pin code and enter single app mode before restarting. So that hopefully once the device restarts, we have the app in a locked state again until the next user provides credentials that can obtain a new auth token.
We are struggling to see if this is even possible. Our bosses will be displeased if we tell them it isn't. So anybody with any tips would be very appreciated.
In our application we are using UITableView for data population and that TableView cell contains a button. When we are enabling full keyboard access that time only TableView cell is focusing not the button. We need to focus on cell and button differently.
SwiftUI provides the accessibilityCustomContent(_:_:) modifier to add additional accessibility information for an element. However, I couldn’t find a similar approach in UIKit.
Is there a way to achieve this in UIKit?
Hello,
the AVSpeechSynthesisVoice has a audioFileSettings attributes
let utterance = AVSpeechUtterance(string: text)
utterance.voice = AVSpeechSynthesisVoice(identifier: voiceSelected!)
print("- voice \(utterance.voice!.audioFileSettings)")
["AVLinearPCMIsBigEndianKey": 0, "AVLinearPCMIsFloatKey": 1, "AVLinearPCMIsNonInterleaved": 1, "AVNumberOfChannelsKey": 1, "AVSampleRateKey": 22050, "AVFormatIDKey": 1819304813, "AVLinearPCMBitDepthKey": 32]
This is declared in
AVSpeechSynthesisVoice {
...
@available(iOS 13.0, *)
open var **audioFileSettings:** [String : Any] { get }
@available(iOS 17.0, *)
open var voiceTraits: AVSpeechSynthesisVoice.Traits { get }
}
How can we specify the audioFileSettings attributes in a AVSpeechSynthesisProviderVoice ?
Cause in AVSpeechSynthesisProviderVoice there is no such field
AVSpeechSynthesisProviderVoice {
open var name: String { get }
open var identifier: String { get }
open var primaryLanguages: [String] { get }
open var supportedLanguages: [String] { get }
open var voiceSize: Int64
open var version: String
open var gender: AVSpeechSynthesisVoiceGender
open var age: Int
}
Regards
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
When my app is in the background, I create a Live Activity through a push notification with token get from pushToStartTokenUpdates, and this process works fine. However, without opening the app, how can I retrieve the new push token for this Live Activity again and use it for subsequent updates to the Live Activity content?
In our application we are using a Search bar in a pop over view and we have enabled Accessibility full keyboard access and we are using external keyboard. Now if the focus is on Searcher that time by next Tab key press Search bar will dismiss and focus needs to shift to the next UIElement.
I have a parent view containing 10 subviews. To control the VoiceOver navigation order, I set only a few elements in accessibilityElements. However, the remaining elements are not being focused or are completely inaccessible.
Is this the expected behavior? If I only specify a subset of elements in accessibilityElements, does it exclude the rest? What’s the best way to ensure all elements remain accessible while customising the order?
After enabling Developer Mode on my iPhone and restarting it, the device asks me to press the Home button to confirm. Unfortunately, my Home button is broken, so I can’t access Developer Mode. The iPhone itself still works, but I can’t enable the mode. Is there any way to bypass this without the Home button?
Topic:
Accessibility & Inclusion
SubTopic:
General
How can I force VoiceOver to read parentheses for math expressions like this:
Text("(2+3)×4") // VoiceOver: Two plus three, times four
I’m looking for a way to have VoiceOver announce parentheses (e.g. “left paren”, “right paren”) without relying on NumberFormatter.Style.spellOut or .speechAlwaysIncludesPunctuation(), as both have drawbacks.
Using .spellOut breaks braille output and Rotor › Characters menu by turning numbers and symbols into words. And .speechAlwaysIncludesPunctuation() makes VoiceOver overly verbose—for example, it reads “21” as “twenty hyphen one.”
Is there a better way to selectively announce specific punctuation like parentheses while keeping numbers and symbols intact for braille and Rotor use?
I’m trying to set the accessibilityActivationPoint directly on a UITableViewCell so that VoiceOver activate on a specific button inside the cell. However, this approach doesn’t seem to work.
Instead, when I override the accessibilityActivationPoint property inside the UITableViewCell subclass and return the desired point, it works as expected.
Why doesn’t setting accessibilityActivationPoint directly on the cell work, but overriding it inside the cell does? Is there a recommended approach for handling this scenario?
The following approach works,
override var accessibilityActivationPoint: CGPoint {
get {
return convert(toggleSwitch.center, to: nil)
}
set{
super.accessibilityActivationPoint = newValue
}
}
but setting accessibility point directly not works
private func configureAccessibility() {
isAccessibilityElement = true
accessibilityLabel = titleLabel.text
accessibilityTraits = .toggleButton
accessibilityActivationPoint = self.convert(toggleSwitch.center, to: self)
accessibilityValue = toggleSwitch.accessibilityValue
}
In our application we are using OTP login. When accessibility full keyboard access is enabled, and we are trying to enter OTP in the OTP field that time in iOS 17 focus is moving to the next text field accordingly but in iOS 18 focus is staying the first OTP field only and not moving to the next text field.
accessibilityUserInputLabels is working fine with any view I tried this on. Meaning that the control can be toggled with the provided alternative names when using Voice Control.
When setting this property on any UIBarButtonItem though, it seems Voice Control ignores the alternative names provided by setting accessibilityUserInputLabels. For comparison, accessibilityLabel works perfectly when set on UIBarButtonItem.
Is anyone facing the same issue?
Using Xcode 16.0 (16A242) on iOS 18
I am building a language learning app for a unlisted primary language. My plan is to go with english. Any other suggestions or heads up? Check screenshot.
Its unfortunate that i have to tag a language learning app incorrectly and a tag for that language probably does not exist across the apple system.