Hi, I'm Jenny Kay from Reaper Made Easy. If there's anything that the Mac does well, it is to talk. It talks a lot. What I wanna do here is to make it talk less, making the experience faster and smoother. I will show you the basic settings, plus a few things that will make navigating the Mac easier, with a few notes on how any of this can affect your work in Reaper. Just before starting this recording, I reset all my voiceover settings to default. I did hesitate before doing that, but I thought it would be best if I started from scratch. How I'm setting this up might not suit you at all. You might want more information from voiceover than I do, but at least with this guide you will know where the settings are and you can change them when you want to. So let's do this. The first thing I'm gonna do is to change the voice. To use this voice dialogue, we need to hold down VO, Command and Shift. VO is Control and Option held down together. so this key will b: VO+Command+Shift. Hold those down while navigating the dialogue with arrow keys. [I navigate the dialog with right arrow until I find the voice selection.] This is set to automatic by language, it's not something I like, so I'm just gonna pick my favorite voice from this list. [I use the arrow keys to select Karen, compact, English.] Let go of those keys and it will save and close automatically. Next is the Verbosity dialogue, VO+v. In this dialogue, you don't have to hold the keys down. The dialogue is open now so let's see what's in here with left and right arrows. [I navigate between these options with left and right arrow. I adjust the value with up and down arrow.] Speech Verbosity level: High. I'll set this to medium. Punctuation: Some. Typing echo: Characters and words. I don't want to hear what character I'm typing, but to know the word I just wrote is useful, so I'll set this to words. Text attributes: Do nothing. Numbers: Words. Capitals: Change pitch. When status changes: Play tone. I'm done in here, so I'll hit escape to close this dialogue. Most of my tweaks will happen in the voiceover utility, so I'm gonna open that with VO+f8. I'm gonna start in verbosity. [I use arrow keys to select the verbosity category.] Navigate into this with VO+rightArrow, and select the hints tab with VO+Space. [I use VO+right arrow to go through the following options] Speak instruction for using the item in the voiceover cursor: Checkbox checked. These spoken instructions are a big part of why voiceover talks so much, so let's uncheck this. When you're learning voiceover, these instructions are useful, but once you learn how to deal with these controls, then you probably don't want to hear them every time. [I uncheck the checkbox with VO+Space] Speak help:Speak help. Help tags are often long, and I rarely find them useful, so I'm gonna set this to do nothing. [I use down arrow to select do nothing and hit enter.] When an item has custom actions: Speak help Custom actions. I will set that to do nothing as well. [I use down arrow to select do nothing and hit enter.] When an item has more content: Speak help. I will set that to do nothing. But remember that there are options to play sounds rather than doing nothing, so if that suits you better, use that. [I use down arrow to select do nothing and hit enter.] The next thing I want to change is in sound. [I navigate back to the category list and select the sound category. I use VO+RightArrow to go through the following options:] Mute sound effects, unchecked. That's fine as is. Enable audio ducking, checked. Audio ducking. I will turn that off. You might have noticed in the audio for this tutorial that voiceover sometimes is ducking itself, so it's not working the way it should, so I keep it off. [I uncheck this with VO+Space] Enable positional audio, checked. Positional audio is fine as is. And the rest is audio device settings. I'll go back to the categories and into navigation. [I navigate back to the category list and select the Navigation category. I use VO+RightArrow to go through the following options:] Keyboard focused item, Initial position of voiceover cursor, pop-up button. Standard, grouping behaviour, pop-up button. Synchronize keyboard focus and voiceover cursor, checked. This is also called cursor tracking and can be toggled with VO+F3. Let's keep this checked. Ignores voiceover cursor, mouse pointer, pop-up button. Mouse pointer ignores voiceover cursor. Let's leave it at that. That's what we want. Another option in here is to have the mouse pointer follow the voiceover cursor. I find that useful at times. But it will cause problems in Reaper. So let's not do that. Allow cursor wrapping, unchecked. [I chaeck this option with VO+Space.] Cursor wrapping. This means that when you reach the end of a dialogue, it doesn't give me the donk sound. It just wraps around to the beginning of the dialogue again. This is just a preference of mine, not necessarily a recommendation. Another tip is to use VO+Home or End to go to the beginning or end of a dialogue. Skip redundant labels, unchecked. I have to be honest and say that I'm not sure what this does. If I've ever seen one, I don't know. But redundant tells me I don't want them, so I'll check this. [I check this with VO+Space.] Automatically interact when using tab key, checked. Enable fast searching, unchecked. Finally I'm heading all the way back up to general. [I navigate back to the category list and select the General category. I use VO+RightArrow to go through the following options:] Speak the following greeting after login. [In the following text box I change the text.] Display welcome text whenn voiceover starts, unchecked. Control Option or Caps lock, Keys to use as the voiceover modifier, pop-up button. This is by default set to use either Control and Option or Caps Lock, and I will leave it at that. If you're used to NVDA on Windows for example, Caps Lock might be a good choice for you. Portable preferences off. [Portable settings are used to bring your voiceover settings to a different mac.] Allow voiceover to be controlled by Apple scripts, checked. And I am done in there. [I close voiceover utilities withCommand+q.] This voice is a little bit slow, so I'm gonna turn up the rate. [I enter the voice settings dialog again, holding down VO+Command+Shift, and find the rate setting. I use upArrow to increase the rate.] Yeah, something like that. Now, VoiceOver speaks the name of the control I'm currently on and what type it is. If I turn Verbosity level down to low in that same dialog, it will speak the name, but not the type. And now with all those basic settings taken care of, we're gonna look at a few things that will make navigating the Mac easier. We're gonna look at the Item chooser. The Windows Spots menu Quick Nav, and Function Keys. Stay with me. Item Chooser, VO+i. The Item Chooser creates a list of everything that is visible to VoiceOver on the screen. You can use First Letter Navigation, and when you find what you're looking for, hit Enter on it and it will take you right there. So how can this be useful in Reaper? I find it quite helpful in monster dialogs like the IODialog and complex plugins like RS5K or ReaxComp. The window spots menu, VO+U. Open the window spots menu with VO+U. What this is really useful for is in the browser, so I'm gonna open Safari. When the page is done loading, hit VO+U. Use left and right arrows to move between the various lists that it creates from what it finds on the web page. [The window spots menu opens. I navigate with left and right arrow through the various lists.] All the headings, form controls, tables, landmarks, window spots and links. [I move to the list of headings.] I'm gonna see what headings are on this page so I arrow down. [VoiceOver reads the headings and the heading levels. I pick Heading level 2, Latest commit.] And just as with the item chooser, hitting enter will take you right there. [I hit enter and voiceover moves to Heading level 2, Latest commit, and the menu closes automatically.] And how is this useful in Reaper? The answer is, it's not. In Reaper, VO+U will give you the title bar and nothing else. Quick nav. Turn this on by pressing the left and right arrow at the same time. Now select your rotor item with upArrow+rightArrow or up Arrow+leftArrow. [Rotor items are the types of elements you want to navigate quickly with up and down arrows, such as Form controls, Headings, links, buttons Etcetera.] And then move between those controls with up and down arrows. Navigating the Mac with just one hand on the arrow keys can really speed up things. And sometimes it's simply a necessity. What quick nav is really good for is web navigation. Turn quick nav on. [Quick nav on.] Then turn single key quick nav on with VO+q. [Single key quick nav on.] Now you can navigate a web page in a way similar to how you would using NVDA or JAWS on Windows. Hit H for headings, L for links and so on. What about in Reaper then? Well, since we already use single keys to navigate tracks, etcetera in Reaper, Quick nav will not be of much use. If you want to try it, prepare to turn it off and on often. And if you notice that your focus jumps from the toolbar to the tracks to somewhere else, it could be that your quick nav has been turned on by accident and it's tripping you up. Make sure it's off by pressing leftArrow+rightArrow. You can check your quick nav settings in VoiceOver Utility, Commanders category. We recommend keeping it off. Function keys. When working in Reaper, we use the function keys a lot. F5 mutes, F6 solos, F7 arms for recording etcetera. The problem is that the default on a Mac, is to hold down the function key along with the actual function key on the keyboard for those hotkeys to work. But we don't have to do that. For the most part, we can tell the Mac that we want to use the standard function keys as they are. F1. F2. F3 etcetera. And in all honesty, I only have so many fingers and so much dexterity to go around. I'm going to go to the Mac menu and find System Preferences. (On macOS Sonoma it is called System Settings.) [I hit VO+ m for the Mac menu, then VO+rightArrow to find the view menu, downArrow once and then k to select keyboard and hit enter to open the keyboard settings.] VO+rightArrow all the way to the end. Use F1, F2 etcetera keys as standard function keys, checked checkbox. [At default settings, this checkbox is unchecked.] And this is the magic checkbox. This gives you the standard function keys and you don't have to hold down the function key to make things happen. [When this option is selected, press the FN key to use the special features printed on each key.] And what this is telling you is that you will not lose any functionality on your keyboard. You will just use the designated function key in a different way. Contact us: training at theglobalvoice.info. Check us out on https://reaperteacher.com. This is Jenny Kay from the Reaper Made Easy team. I hope this helps.