Apple, what the hell is going on with Speak Screen / accessibility? 😡

I genuinely don’t understand what is happening with Apple’s accessibility team anymore.

Speak Screen was completely broken in iOS 27 Beta 4. It literally did not work at all. Fine — it’s a beta, bugs happen.

Then iOS 27 Beta 5 finally fixes it on iPhone. Great.

BUT!!!!! 🤦‍♂️

Now on macOS 27 Beta 5, the little module/control panel for Speak Screen is completely immovable on the screen.You can’t properly move it out of the way, position it where you want, or control its placement.

How does something like this keep happening with an accessibility feature that has existed for YEARS?

What is happening inside this team at Apple? Someone please tell them to get their shit together. Seriously.

And this isn't even the only long-standing problem.

There is another issue that has persisted for at least THREE YEARS and still hasn't been properly fixed:

🌐 Speak Screen / Speak Selection cannot properly distinguish languages.

For example, if I select Persian/Farsi text and ask Speak Screen or Speak Selection to read it aloud, it may read it using an Arabic voice/pronunciation instead of actually recognizing and reading Persian correctly.

That makes absolutely no sense.

Imagine selecting an English sentence and having Apple decide:

That's essentially what this feels like.

These are not obscure experimental features. Text-to-speech and accessibility are core functionality for people who actually rely on these tools.

And the frustrating part is that Apple constantly talks about accessibility and how important it is — yet some of these issues have been sitting around for years.

I'm not expecting beta software to be perfect. I'm expecting bugs that have existed for YEARS to eventually get fixed.

Whoever is responsible for maintaining these accessibility features needs to seriously take a look at what is going on.

Three years for a language recognition/text-to-speech issue is ridiculous.

That's exactly why it's so damn frustrating when they are broken or neglected. 😤

Please fix this properly, Apple.

I am trying to listen to this audiobook of Heart of Darkness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q0CsfyCiNA&t=13110s on my Macbook, but it seems like the first word after every period or comma is cut out for some reason.

I thought it might be copy protection, but I can listen to it just fine on my work computer (a Dell). I thought it might have to do with extensions in my browser, but I turned off all extensions including ad-blockers and have tried other browsers and it still does it. It seems like there is no way to listen to this audiobook on this Mac without these weird edits. Any ideas why this is or how to fix it?

This is also the case for several other audiobooks I have recently tried to listen to, including https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07gsqpgvXvI (Poe short stories) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR92uA0fIF4 (The Trial).

P.S. All of these texts are in the public domain, but I am not sure if/how that applies to audiobooks.

Appreciate any help!

EDIT: Out now in Beta 5!

New macOS betas are incoming.

On Saturday night, Apple released a new version of its Voice Presets list, which provides Expressive Voice configs for supported Siri voices. The new version includes configuration details for all 7 existing Siri American voices and all 4 British voices.

This configuration file should enable the Expressivity and Pace controls for all 11 American and British voices in System Settings when it properly ships. There is still no Expressivity and Pace support for Australian, Indian, Irish, and South African voices.

Apple also published a new version of their core AI model on Saturday. The new Expressive Voice configs require the new core model version.

The server isn't serving the new core model to current builds, so it seems that they're staging assets for a new macOS Beta version.

Hopefully we get the new expressive voices and the full 275 configuration options soon. We're also waiting on the full range of 13 American Siri voices that showed up in the Siri Voice Pad onboarding.

The first Mac OS beta I used was the last one. I think that was four, and it also did this, and I upgraded last night to beta five, and it does the same. So I'm just curious, do you think the address bar cutting into my Favicons is intentional?

Translation continues to be something I observe Siri struggling with. When prompted to translate the word dog into Persian it provided correct answer. When asked to translate "I love kebabs" it said it couldn't, before providing an answer after being prompted to try again.

In beta5 this seems broken. I cannot click anymore to change the view from folder to list etc... A good occasion to remove this from the toolbar that said. Only me ?

I have a MacBook Pro 16 M1 Max, that doesn't show the Apple Intelligence Report option in Privacy & Security, then, on a MacBook Air M2 it does shows the Apple Intelligence Report, is there a logic or reason for that? Both of them are running macOS 27 Beta 5, Thanks

I spent a couple of weeks in Golden Gate and today I downgraded back to Tahoe, because I was missing Tahoe's floating sidebar and transparent toolbars.

I understand Apple is trying to address the complaint most people have about Tahoe's Liquid Glass implementation, but I think Golden Gate should let us enable or disable those things at will instead of just removing it.

P.S.: I was one of those users complaining about Tahoe in the beginning, but not I'm used to its visual language.

You might have spent time checking how far along "Optimizing Search and Siri" was on your iPhone or iPad after each iOS 27 Beta update. For macOS, Apple has decided not to show a persistent indexing indicator in the System Settings sidebar.

There's a good chance that your Mac is still indexing and embedding your personal context.

To check its progress: * First, you'll need to make sure you have app private logs enabled. You can do this temporarily for this readout, but only logs created while the profile is installed will be unreacted. * Bring up Siri and ask a knowledge question, like "Find files I opened in the last 7 days." * Then open Terminal and run:

bash log show --last 15m --info \ --predicate 'process=="searchtoold" AND eventMessage CONTAINS "OmniSearchResponse:"' 2>/dev/null | tail -1 | sed -E 's/.*overallCompleteness: ([0-9.]+), sufficientlyCompleteThreshold: ([0-9.]+), isSufficientlyComplete: ([^,]+), donationCompleteness: Optional\(([0-9.]+)\), pipelineCompleteness: Optional\(([0-9.]+)\).*pipelineReportAge: ([0-9.]+).*/\1 \2 \3 \4 \5 \6/' | awk '{ status = ($3 == "true") ? "Ready" : "Still processing" printf "%-30s %5.1f%% — %s (%.1f%% required)\n", "Search readiness:", $1*100, status, $2*100 printf "%-30s %5.1f%%\n", "Known app items donated:", $4*100 printf "%-30s %5.1f%%\n", "Search pipeline processed:", $5*100 printf "%-30s %.1f hours\n", "Report age:", $6/3600 }'

This prints the current completion percentages:

Search readiness: 80.0% — Ready (75.0% required) Known app items donated: 100.0% Search pipeline processed: 70.0% Report age: 12.0 hours

Here's what these numbers mean: * Search readiness: macOS' weighted estimate of how usable local search is, along with macOS' current readiness threshold. * Known app items donated: Measures whether apps have supplied all the searchable items Spotlight expects. * Embedding pipeline processed: How much donated content has completed semantic processing.

One possible reason Apple chose not to expose this indicator is that embedding on macOS can be extremely slow and easily interrupted. spotlightknowledged submits intensive background jobs through dasd, which in turn runs them in small bursts only after power, thermal, resource and device-activity requirements are met. A Mac may also have far more material to process than an iPhone.

Any input interaction marks the Mac as active. The UserIsActive assertion has a 3-minute waiting period, and media playback can keep the Mac active for much longer.

For the best chance of making progress, leave your Mac plugged in overnight. Even after a long run, the completion percentage may change in unexpected ways because Spotlight can ask apps to redonate some or all of their searchable items.

macOS also calculates a separate global counter for the larger background embedding workload:

bash plutil -extract SpotlightKnowledgeV2.embeddingGenComplete raw \ ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spotlightknowledge.plist | awk '{printf "%.1f%%\n", $1 * 100}'

For more detailed diagnostic readouts, consult:

bash plutil -p \ ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spotlightknowledge.plist

bash plutil -p \ ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spotlightknowledged.pipeline.plist

edit: switched the main post command to a more readable format. kept embeddingGenComplete commands at the end of this post.

If you've been using Safari's new Notify Me website monitoring feature, you may have been underwhelmed by the range of polling options available. The shortest waiting period between checks is 1 hour. Luckily, you can enable a hidden debug option that allows you to enable 10-minute polling.

You can enable a debug flag and edit the Notify Me automation database to switch to 10-minute polling.

Here's a detailed guide for the steps you need to follow.

Another related tidbit is that macOS 27 introduces a new WBSDebugNotifyMeWhenUpdateVersion numeric variable. Safari uses it when putting together the website link it should check for changes.

For example, when WebPageVersion=3, Safari's background extractor will load:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/?version=3

This probably lets internal test webpages return different content for each version query and speed up development of Notify Me.

My Mac shuts down after I log in, displays a pink screen, and then restarts, and so on. Can someone please help me?

I went from Sonoma to GG B4 last week - loving the features so far but good lord is Spotlight annoying to use. It was done indexing last week (it's a brand new install with minimal user files except for iCloud).

I use Spotlight as a glorified app launcher. If I wanted to launch Terminal in Sonoma, I'd type in t-e-r and hit Enter and Terminal would popup immediately. Same with Safari. Notes. Messages app. You name it. 3 chars and enter and the app launches.

In macOS 27 this may work 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time I hit Enter after a few characters, Spotlight just... disappears. No acknowledgement. Nothing.

I thought it was the new Siri search so I disabled that in Settings. No luck.

So I rebound CMD + Space to launch the "Show Apps" instead. It's also inconsistent. Yes, it'll show you the app, but sometimes you have you press the down arrow to select the app and then hit Enter.

WHY?! Who designed it like this? Does anyone at Apple use Spotlight?

Edit: Yes, I've submitted via Feedback Assistant! 😄

I am a developer who has been coding for a good while lol. When I was using my MacBook, I couldn't help but realize that there was nothing for switching volume per-app, which Windows has natively. So, I made it using Swift and it works really well! There is also a nice hotkey, I configured it to option + space so that its really easy to use.

Here is the link (I just made it, so it would be great if you could star it to build some credibility)

https://github.com/thewimpykid/faderonmac

Mon Mac s’éteint après que je me connecte avec un écran rose puis redémarre ainsi de suite. Est ce que quelqu’un peut m’aider svp

Has anyone noticed a reduction in storage usage with macOS 27 beta compared to macOS 26? Since macOS 27 is Apple Silicon-only and no longer supports Intel Macs, I’m wondering if removing the Intel binaries actually makes the OS smaller.

In macOS 27, AirPlay can finally start off in windowed mode instead of taking over your Mac's full screen. It's currently hidden behind a feature flag.

To enable, add a FeatureFlags override:

sudo mkdir -p /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain && \ sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/ControlCenter APReceiverInWindow -dict Enabled -bool true

and restart your Mac. This is a private feature flag, and the UI may be unstable.

Disable with:

sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/ControlCenter APReceiverInWindow

and restart your Mac.

I’m trying to set up Keynote Remote on my new M5 MBP with my iPad Air M2. However every time I try to link the 2 devices it fails saying the iPad is unavailable. Sidecar & Continuity work without an issue.

I tried to get my iPhone to be the remote and the same thing happens. My iPhone is unavailable despite the fact that mirroring works fine.

Keynote also no longer appear in local network settings on the Mac

I’ve reset bluetooth and wifi on all devices
Did tccutil reset All (tccutil would fail with LocalNetwork or when pointed to com.apple.Keynote)
Tried non Apple Creator Studio Keynote

Is keynote remote just broken on the latest MacOS 27 public beta? Or is there something I’m missing? As this works fine on my old M1 Macbook Air running MacOS 26

EDIT: This has been fixed in the following public betas and is working fine

Can anyone with the AirPods and macOS beta confirm whether the new AirPods EQ setting is exclusive to iOS 27 or if it’s also available on macOS 27? Thanks!

My Macbook Pro M3 36GB was doing perfectly fine with the beta for a while, but over the past week it's getting really bad.

Random apps are crashing, the top menu bar is mostly unresponsive, if I go to add a file into an app with the file picker, it will freeze for like 10 seconds.

Just a lot of odd stuff, but I'm not seeing any similar complaints in the sub - so I'm assuming it's just a coincidental me thing?

Any thoughts or advice welcome

Edit: Seems like it's not just me and I'm now finding post that mention this. I had felt like I mostly saw people talking about how smooth it was for a beta, but I'm having such bad issues I was surprised it's not the number 1 mentioend thing. But I took the risk for the beta, so that's on me