When the screen locks, Mac OS says "Dimmed, system dialogue. Authentication is not responding" infinitely until it receives user input

By Unregistered User (not verified), 5 April, 2022

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

I'm running an M1 Mac Mini with Mac OS 12.3.1 hooked up to a thunderbolt dock, and I've lost count of how many times Voiceover gets stuck in this infinite loop when the screen locks. Is there a way to keep this from happening? It's maddening to leave my work, only to come back to hear this thing yammering away.

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Comments

By Tyler on Tuesday, April 5, 2022 - 04:51

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

An alternative to system sleep is to use a screensaver, and set the Mac to go to sleep after a longer period of inactivity. This is what I do, and for me, VoiceOver simply announces "Screensaver" when screensaver starts. It may occasionally announce "Authentication is not responding" when it eventually goes to sleep, but this message is not repeated more than three times for me.

HTH

By Just Another Blind Guy on Tuesday, April 5, 2022 - 21:21

I navigated to System Preferences and found the pane for desktop and screen saver. However, where does one go to adjust the system sleep settings?
Thanks

Update:
If anybody is interested, navigate to System Preferences>Battery and find the table. One option is Power Adaptor. Focus VO and then stop interacting with the table and navigate forward with VO to make choices.

By Maldalain on Wednesday, April 6, 2022 - 00:48

Wow I thought my Mac was announcing this when I navigated to the heading of your post.

By Siobhan on Wednesday, April 6, 2022 - 04:32

@maldalain I thought the same thing. for a split second I was like WTF? Haha. sorry I can't help though.