If anyone has played with macOS Ventura I would love to know your thoughts

I've been testing macOS Ventura and so far have come away with the following impressions. Please note that all of this is based purely on my own experiences and that as it is beta software the following information may change between now and the public release. Also, this list is not a comprehensive document of new features, changes, and bugs; AppleVis will have more detailed coverage at the time of the software's public release.

• As is now widely known, Eloquence voices will be coming to macOS Ventura, as well as iOS and iPadOS 16.
• In some situations, VoiceOver seems somewhat more responsive than it does on Monterey, however VoiceOver performance issues are notoriously difficult to diagnose and measure accurately.
• There is a new text checker feature that aims to detect common formatting mistakes in text. Currently, you must assign your own command via Keyboard Commander in order to use this feature, as no default VoiceOver command has been mapped to it.
• VoiceOver now includes commands to speak the time, date, battery status, and Wi-Fi status. However, like the text checker, no default VoiceOver commands have been mapped to any of these functions; you must assign your own commands via keyboard commander.
• System Preferences has been replaced by a new app called System Settings, in an effort to streamline the organization and experience of changing settings across Apple's platforms. Setting categories are listed in a table which can be navigated with the arrow keys or first-letter navigation, and individual settings are located in a scroll area to the right of the table. However, unlike the "Preference panes" scroll area in System Preferences, you currently cannot navigate scroll areas in System Settings using first-letter navigation; you must use VO-left and right arrow or the Tab key instead.
• The Weather and Clock apps have been brought to macOS. Both apps are usable with VoiceOver, however they each appear to have some bugs, as to be expected in an early beta. For example, navigation of the Weather app with VoiceOver can feel slow at times, and when setting a timer in Clock, you cannot interact with the time picker as you can with other time pickers in macOS. Therefore, to set a timer, you must focus on the time picker, press the Tab key until you hear hours, minutes, or seconds, and then use the up and down arrow keys to adjust the value.
• Turning Stage Manager on or off appears to be a purely visual setting, and thus has no effect on VoiceOver.

Dare I ask... Any improvement with VoiceOver and safari and 'safari not responding'? I'm on a MBP 14, 2021 and am still getting this. Apple did say they were addressing it though.

Hi everyone.
Did anyone try to use Apple Books app in Mac OS Ventura? I sent reports about the bugs with that app to apple a few months ago and they said that they were looking at it. Any improvements or fixes?
Note: I'm not using beta program.

Hello,
I just installed the beta less than an hour ago. Eloquence on the Mac is working very well. On the iPhone I found it to still be a bit buggy, as at 60% it was very very fast, but at 50% it was very slow. They need to work on fine tuning the rate on iOS, but on Mac OS I am very very impressed.
Other than that, things are stable so far. Already did some audio editing which worked well, and while I never had as many problems with Safari not responding as most people, I haven't noticed any issues here either, so it's at least as good as before, maybe even better. I'm using the m1 MacBook Air. Can't say anything for other devices.

I have the command for the date set, but when I do my set key combination to get the date, I get something like, 22tir1401. I don't get this format of date, is there something I'm missing as far as the calendar and having the date in a different format? I'm really confused about this dates format.
As far as the beta, i've noticed what I think its bug, but not sure. If anyone could give it a test, that'd be great.
I'm using elequence as my default voice. However when I log out and I get to the login window, elequence doesn't speak as the default voiceover voice as it is when i'm logged in. Instead one of the default voices such as samantha comes on at the login window, but not elequence, and as far as I can tell, you don't have elequence as a option in the login window if you go into voice, and arrow down through the lists of voices. Can anyone else reproduce this, or has anyone encountered this behavior?
Other than that miner issue, macos ventura has been pretty stable from what i've gotten to work with it.

Hasn't the keyboard commander always had a way to speak time? (Unless I added it ages ago). For me right opt + T does it. It is running an Apple Script, so I guess the new way is more integrated. One thing I have noticed is that before I'm sure there was a pause, then it was read out by a different voice, but now it uses my VoiceOver voice and it's quick. This is on Monterey.

I'm looking forward to Ventura though. Does it fix any focus issues with the VoiceOver cursor?

Authentication is still not responding and Safari is still not responding and Voiceover still doesn't work properly on the login screen.

I keep telling myself this is still a beta, but I'm getting a little nervous. Here's hoping they read our bug reports and do something about them. That said, system settings is the update to system preferences that I had no idea I absolutely, desperately needed. It's so, so, so, so much better than system preferences. There are some issues with system dialogues though. Not too bad.

I was hoping we'd get more bug fixes, I really was. Maybe I'm getting my hopes up again? There's still time in the beta cycle, but I'm worried. I've heard from other people that Apple Books and the terminal are still garbage when it comes to VoiceOver access. I really really really really really want to like this, but it might not be as polished as I was hoping for. This is why I refuse to purchase new hardware until they've made significant strides forward in terms of stability and adding more useful features. How does the text checker feature work? I heard VoiceOver can now indicate indentations which is good, but what else can it do? Have they finished their half-baked PDF support from 2017? As far as I know it's still not possible to reliably navigate by elements like links, headings, edit fields, lists, or tables in properly tagged documents.

I also have the beta as well, and I agree, Eloquence is very responsive on MacOS.

Yeah, the rate issue I have also noticed as well. Hope apple fixes it soon.

Hang on.... Ventura can indicate indentation? Has anyone tried this and can shed some light on how it works?

Hi all,
is there a way to remove voices in Ventura that you don't need?
My speech rotor is full of novelty voices that I will never use, along with all these Eloquence variants, Fredd, Siri voices, and such.
In the previous versions, you could just uncheck any voices you didn't need, but now this screen only shows you which voices you are using, and gives you the option to download one if it isn't already.
Am I missing something?

Thanks.

I'm also interested in knowing the status of the indentation reading. This is the reason why I can't switch to Mac. It is very uncomfortable to coding without having an indentation reading. Thanks!

In VoiceOver Utility > Verbosity > Text, there is a new “Leading tab and space indentation” popup menu. As text indentation is not a big part of my use case, I cannot comment on the current quality or utility of this feature.

Hi.
1. I don't have speech in login window.
2. tdsr apppears to be broken.

I have elequence as my default voice, however on the login window, I don't get elequence as the voice, instead I get samantha, and elequence isn't available when going into the voice, menu, via command shift vo. I already reported this via the feedback app, along with a screen recording of the bug, but has anyone else noticed this?

Thanks Tyler! Does that indentation pop-up menu have more options? Such as using tones or just voice?
If you open text edit and type on the first line "hello", and on the second line four spaces and then the word "bye", and then move through the two lines with the arrows, do you notice any changes? Voiceover says something?
Thanks! This is exciting and opens up a lot of possibilities for me