How to fix Accessibility settings issue leading to Browser Crashes on Sonoma?

Slightly easier fix:

I had essentially the same problem. Web pages making every browser crash.

System settings crashing on Accessibility-> Spoken Content and Live Speech

I went into preferences and found that the only recently changed pref was:

com.apple.SpeakSelection.plist

So I deleted that and System Settings Accessibility-> Spoken Content and Live Speech immediately began to work again and web pages began to display without crashing.

You would find in in the User's Home directory /Library/Preferences

Since the home folder's Library is usually hidden one way to get there is to use the Finder's Go menu and select "Go to Folder..." and type in: ~/Library/Preferences

Or you can hold down the Option key on your keyboard and select the Go menu in Finder - with the Option key held down the user's Library will appear in the list.

Have you looked in the hidden Library folder?

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SpeakSelection.plist

~ tilde indicates  your user library folder

Apple hid the Users' Library folders...

Method 1:

1. From the Finder, select the Go menu at top of the screen, and choose Go to Folder.
2. In the window that opens, enter ~/Library, and click Go.

Or…

 Use the Command-Shift-. 

Method 2:

1. Go to the Finder (or desktop).
2. Hold the Option key on your keyboard, and click the Go menu at the top of the screen.
3. With the Go menu open, you'll notice that pressing and releasing Option will display or hide the Library choice in this menu.

 4 Select Library from the Go menu (while holding down Option) to access the hidden folder.

To expand upon the solution, just go to a terminal and do "rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SpeakSelection.plist". Also for SEO here's the error from Chrome if someone searches for it.

Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException'

my speakselection.plist file keeps being recreated after a min or 2 and shuts down chrome again

Created an account just to comment and thank carfax + everyone for this thread. I would be banging my head against a wall reinstalling macOS and timemachine backups.

For SEO here is what happened in my case:

Out of nowhere this afternoon my Chrome browser just would crash/quit completely, first it seemed to be happening on just one or two websites so I thought it was maybe a javascript or some other issue. Then I noticed my Discord desktop app would get to the "starting.." and then completely crash.

I wasn't able to figure out how to get an error message from Chrome or Discord but I managed to get a crash report from Safari once I realized it was affecting all browsers. Logging in to another user profile on the same machine did NOT exhibit any issues whatsoever.

I was able to grab a debug report from Safari - the Safari "crashed thread" called out "Dispatch queue: create-voices-avspeech" which sent me down a rabbit hole of searching. Somehow my google searches led me here.

I moved the offending .plist file elsewhere and everything magically worked again. THANK YOU x 1000000000.

Any ideas why the heck this started happening recently for most of us here?

Well this is weard. After implementing CarFax solution and things working well since doing that suddenly this morning safari, safari development, chrome and plex desktop app all starting crashing again (as before) deleted om.apple.SpeakSelection.plist again and things now work.

The question is what is corrupting that preference that is causing these problems?

harddrivin1le wrote:

Do to this and so many other reasons, I'm going to have to migrate everything to a real browser such as Chrome of Firefox. Apple gives low priority to Safari, meaning it never works as well as the others.

You must not have realized by reading this thread that Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and any other browser will crash and the solution is to delete the preference file listed. It is not specific to the Safari browser.

CarFax you are a genius. I wasted a lot of time reinstalling 14.5 with no luck until I looked more closely at the browser and Plex desktop app more closely and found the same/similar crashed threads and then I found this threed and your post. Deleting the com.apple.SpeakSelection.plist fixed the problem without even logging out of my user. Thanks for your help.

All my browsers stopped working as with other users. Things worked with alternate user. Things worked with parallels. Things did not work in safe mode. I spent 3 hours with apple support with no solution. I reinstalled sonoma in recovery mode with no fix. I was finally told to wipe the computer and reinstall from time machine before the problem began. I then found your thread and deleted com.apple.SpeakSelection.plist as a last resort. Everything began to work!!!! Please send this information to apple support.

It works! Just delete com.apple.SpeakSelection.plist and reboot then all browsers are fixed. I give you a deep bow. Thanks a lot!

Thanks, carfax!!! This worked for me.

Take a look at both of carfax's posts to see how to find the file he says to delete.

Check out carfax's post on how to find the file.

carfax you're a genius. This workaround works fine

Hi Tigerladybarb - I had exactly the same issue straight after a Somona upgrade ... browser apps crashing on certain sites (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) - their dumps showed the crashes were linked to speech. I had the same errors in System Preferences -> Accessibility-> Spoken Content and Live Speech. Also in terminal "say hello" threw an exception.

I created a separate admin account on the macbook and tested for the above - none of the symptoms were present so how I fixed it was to make a backup of ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.* from both my existing and my new user accounts, then when logged in as my existing account, copied in the files from my new admin account overwriting the old settings. Apologies if anyone is looking for precision but I didn't find the specific properties list file as this does reset most of your settings but I was able to quickly redo my changed settings.

Not suggesting this approach is for purists as it needs more precision but it worked for me no guarantee it will work for anyone else - I first backed up all files in my ~/Library/Preferences in case I needed them

Login as new user

mkdir /tmp/user1

chmod 777 /tmp/user1

cp ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.* /tmp/user1

Login as original user then

cp /tmp/user1/com.apple.* ~/Library/Preferences