Spotify jumps to top of playlist when I enable VoiceOver on macos

[mrgrieves]

Plan: Premium

Country: UK

Device: macos big sur

My Question or Issue

If I am looking at a Spotify playlist and press Cmd+F5 to enable VoiceOver, the playlist position jumps to the top of the list.  (I don't think Spotify even needs to have focus for this to happen)

If I keep VoiceOver enabled, I can scroll down the playlist, but as soon as I click it jumps back to the top again.

[Alex]

Hey @mrgrieves,

Thanks for reporting this in the Community!

What is most likely happening is that the VoiceOver app is trying to read the playlist as a page from top to bottom.

Can you let us know if you can click on the playlist normally if you've pressed the Control key after starting the VoiceOver app? This should momentarily pause the VO.

Let us know how you get on with this.

[mrgrieves]

Thanks for the reply.

I tried that, but it didn't seem to make a difference. Ctrl stops VO speaking whatever it is currently saying, but that's about it.

One thing I did notice is that if I scroll down list the list, VoiceOver constantly reads the same song title out over and over again. (And not the first one I think)

I'm not very skilled at VO yet, but I tried to navigate using the VO keys rather than the mouse. With some difficulty, I managed to navigate into the playlist table.

If I then press VO+down I can navigate it row by row, once it gets to about 22 or something, it then jumps back to row 2.

Also, if I hold down VO+down to move down the table quickly, I fairly quickly find myself out of the table and in some random other part of the app, which is quite disorientating.

On an unrelated note, this post is my first experience with the forum and both times I've tried to write something - whether it be the issue in the first place or my reply to you now - I have got a System Error. The first time, going Back ended up breaking the whole forum as it seemed to get stuck in a redirect loop. So I switched to Firefox and it worked. But replying in Firefox now I got another error. Fortunately I could navigate back but it still lost everything I typed in.

[Jeremy]

Hi there @mrgrieves,

Thank you for getting back in touch with us.

Can you perform a clean reinstall of the app? This will make sure there's no old cache files causing this. If that doesn't fix the issue, let us know the version of the app your Mac is running?

Also, did this issue start appearing recently, e.g. after an update to the Spotify app and does this only happen when navigating within playlists, or in other contexts as well?

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

Take care!

[mrgrieves]

Thanks very much for the reply.

I reinstalled Spotify as you requested and it is now version 1.1.56.595.g2d2da0de

(As a side-note: not sure about those instructions, as they tell me to delete everything in Library that contains Spotify, which does include things outside the Spotify application as far as I can tell.)

The problem still occurs.

Are you able to reproduce it?

I've only just started to use VoiceOver, so I'm afraid I can't say if this is a new problem.

I also got another Unexpected Error trying to post my reply.  Twice now, so hoping third time is lucky....

[Novy]

Hi again @mrgrieves, 

Thanks for getting back to us with this info. 

Could you send over a video where we can take a better look at this issue? You can send a link to it or attach it using the Insert Video option in the post editor, just make sure to exclude any personal info from it.

Regarding the errors you mentioned, we'd recommend clearing your browser's cache and cookies to see if you notice anything new. 

We'll be on the lookout. 

[mrgrieves]

Thanks again for the quick reply.

I've never recorded a video before - and being visually impaired it's quite a tricky thing to do I'm sure.  I will try to have a go at it when I have some time available.

In the meantime, it's an incredibly easy thing to reproduce.  Simply have a playlist long enough to scroll, turn on VoiceOver and scroll/click around.  It happens every time, straight away, and only requires the user to know how to turn it on and off.  I'd hope a company as big as Spotify would do some testing with accessibility tools like VoiceOver.

[mrgrieves]

Is the only way to upload a video if I find somewhere to host it and point at a URL?  I spent quite a bit of time creating the video, converitng it to mp4 and trying to compress it before I noticed that you told me to use the insert video rather than attachment option.  I'll also have to re-record it as I noticed that it includes some of the names of my friends in the right hand bar.

It's pretty frustrating that no one at Spotify is willing to spend 2 seconds to just switch on VoiceOver and see if the problem happens.  This should be something that is supported anyway.

[CarlosE]

Hi again @mrgrieves,

Thanks for keeping in touch.

We really appreciate the time and effort you've put in to making the video. You can upload it to another platform, like Google Drive or YouTube, and send us the link so we can take a look. Rest assured, we'll make sure to do our best to help you out with this and having a video where we can see exactly what's happening will be of great help to us.

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

[mrgrieves]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14YJRrbuZu0h51y2HwwUcpgrIa7M58N31/view?usp=sharing

This only shows the problem with the mouse, not with the VO keys (which is the more likely way a normal VO user will access the app), but hopefully it's enough to show that there's a problem.

Please let me know when I can delete the video.

PS -a nd as if these forums are annoying enough as it is, now the captcha is making me doing a picture challange, with no optino for an audio version.  (And after successfully managing to identify the fire hydrants I got the unexpected error again.

[Jeremy]

Hi again @mrgrieves,

Thank you for your reply and thank you so much for bringing this forward to us.

We passed this on to our accessibility team and we think our new desktop app should improve this behavior. You should receive the update sometime next week so just get back to us afterwards and let us know how everything works.

Make sure that you're app is up to date. You can find the steps on how to make sure of that here.

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

Take care!

[mrgrieves]

Installed an update today (now on 1.1.58.820.g2ae50076).  Doesn't look like it's made any difference.

Is anyone in your "accessibility team" testing with VoiceOver?  Has anyone reproduced this issue?  (Or tried to?)

[Xenia · Accepted solution]

Hey @mrgrieves,

Thanks for keeping us posted!

Right now, we are working on a New Desktop App, which is being gradually rolled out to all users and should improve the experience.

You could follow the steps here if you'd like to test out this new version or wait until your account changes automatically - which shouldn't be too long.

Let us know how you get on - We’ll be here for you if there's anything else you'd like to ask.

[mrgrieves]

The new app has appeared now - given it a quick go and it looks like the problem has been sorted!! (And as a bonus you've now changed the selected row colour so I can actually tell which tracks are selected).

I will try to spend a bit more time with it when I get some time to see how well it works with VO, but it seemed to keep my place in the list, and also read things out correctly as I used up/down cursor keys.

Thanks very much for the help - this looks a lot better!

[Alex]

Hey @mrgrieves,

Thanks for the reply and your feedback on the new update 🙂

Don't hesitate to reach out to us again if you have any questions.

Cheers.