Automatic button highlighting/selection

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Level 1

58 points

Automatic button highlighting/selection

Somehow I turned on a system-wide feature(?) that I'd like to turn off. A button or control of any dialog box is always selected (highlighted by a blue border). This happens in Finder or any app. See the "About This Mac" dialog image attached, where "System Report..." has the blue border. I've looked at at every system setting I can think of (especially Trackpad, Keyboard, Accessibility) to disable this, but no luck. Anyone know how to toggle this off?

MacBook Pro

Posted on Sep 24, 2020 2:16 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Ogham Author

Level 1

58 points

Sep 24, 2020 8:22 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

I finally figured it out by comparing settings with another MBP not behaving the same way. Turns out to be simple; I just had to uncheck the "Use keyboard navigation" box of the Keyboard system preference (Shortcuts tab).

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Answer 2

Sep 24, 2020 3:35 AM in response to Ogham

Press Control-F7.

You can change whether things like buttons can be selected via the keyboard or not.

The default shortcut for toggling this on and off is Control-F7.

You may have pressed it accidentally.

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Answer 3

Sep 24, 2020 3:46 PM in response to Ogham

Yes, it changes what controls ard selected with the tab key.

When the setting is not “all controls”, I see no button selected.

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Answer 4

Sep 25, 2020 1:58 AM in response to Ogham

Great, and thanks for pointing out the solution.

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Answer 5

Ogham Author

Level 1

58 points

Sep 24, 2020 2:09 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

This doesn't change what I'm seeing, but has more to do with how the tab key moves the focus among controls. No matter what, something is selected when a dialog opens. I would think something in the Accessibility system preference would control this, but I've tried everything there with no change.

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Automatic button highlighting/selection

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