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Hover Text

I have the hover text settings enabled, but it doesn't operate. Why?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.5

Posted on Jul 27, 2021 4:58 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 27, 2021 6:12 PM

Hello Tomoo67,


Some things that weren’t intuitive to me when first turning on Hover Text were the pointer location when pressing the activator button and the need to use an activator button at all. This made me believe mine wasn’t working. I will display my settings below but your modifier key may be different.

Use Hover Text on Mac - Apple Support



To one-time display hover text I actually need move my pointer after pressing my “Activation modifier” (the option key). If the pointer is already over the text when I press option nothing happens, until I move the pointer over the text.


For Hover Text to always be on, to display when your pointer is over any text, without needing any activation modifier key, you need to triple press your modifier key. This ended up very annoying in my option.


If none of that is the issue you may want to try restarting your MacBook after turning it on or cycling the feature off then back on. Then, if still not working, you would likely want to contact Apple Support directly about the issue.


I hope this helps.

4 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 27, 2021 6:12 PM in response to Tomoo67

Hello Tomoo67,


Some things that weren’t intuitive to me when first turning on Hover Text were the pointer location when pressing the activator button and the need to use an activator button at all. This made me believe mine wasn’t working. I will display my settings below but your modifier key may be different.

Use Hover Text on Mac - Apple Support



To one-time display hover text I actually need move my pointer after pressing my “Activation modifier” (the option key). If the pointer is already over the text when I press option nothing happens, until I move the pointer over the text.


For Hover Text to always be on, to display when your pointer is over any text, without needing any activation modifier key, you need to triple press your modifier key. This ended up very annoying in my option.


If none of that is the issue you may want to try restarting your MacBook after turning it on or cycling the feature off then back on. Then, if still not working, you would likely want to contact Apple Support directly about the issue.


I hope this helps.

Jul 27, 2021 7:16 PM in response to Tomoo67

You are very welcome!


It looks like the issue you described is not exclusive to third-party apps. I tested it out in the Mail App. The hover text appears at the top of the window for all text in the email when viewing in my inbox. If I open the message in its own window the hover text will not display at all like you described.


For these types of things I like to leave feedback, especially when speaking about accessibility. https://www.apple.com/feedback/ I submitted one under my product and Hardware/Software compatibility.


You may also want to reach out to FB about this issue as formatting on their end could be causing it.

Hover Text

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