macOS Home Assistant Companion App: No Accessibility Features

[misterbond007]

Device model, version and app version

Model Name: Mac mini 2024 Apple M4
macOS Version: macOS Sequoia 15.2
App Version: Home Assistant Companion App version 2024.12.2 (2024.1058)
Safari Version: Version 18.2 (20620.1.16.11.8)

Home Assistant Core Version

2025.1.2

Describe the bug
Home Assistant does not correctly report the focused UI element using Apple's Accessibility features. When a text field in Home Assistance has keyboard focus, the Accessibility API does not report a UI element with the role “text field” or “text area” as having focus, but rather a generic group. This prevents Accessibility-enabled tools from being able to detect when a user might need assistance typing into a text field.

Specifically, the issue is that, when a text field is focused in Home Assistant, the "AXFocusedUIElement" attribute of the system-wide UI element does not indicate a UI element with the role “AXTextField” or “AXTextArea” is focused.

To Reproduce
Install macOS 15.2
Install Home Assistant Companion App version 2024.12.2 (2024.1058)
On a touch screen set the focus into a text field

Expected behavior
When a text field in Home Assistance Companion has keyboard focus, the Accessibility API should report a UI element with the role “text field” or “text area” as having focus.

[bgoncal]

Thanks for reporting the issue, currently the App only displays a webview with Home Assistant frontend inside, so I'd recommend reporting this in the frontend repo since the App is not in control on what displays in the webview.

[misterbond007]

I have reported it in the frontend repo, but they said, I should post it here :-)

[bgoncal]

Could you link me to the frontend issue?

[misterbond007]

home-assistant/frontend#23664

[bgoncal]

Thanks, I wrote a comment there.

[misterbond007]

Don't you think the issue is because of the webview, that the macOS accesibilty feature only sees a "group", but not a text field? I'm pretty sure, it's an issue with the macOS app, not the frontend, because in the Firefox Browser I don't have any problems.

[bgoncal]

You need to compare to Safari to evaluate that, but in the App can't you focus on anything inside the webview? a button for example.

[misterbond007]

I have tested it now in Safari too, without any problems: the accesibilty feature works (the text field is recognized as a text field).

I can focus on buttons and on everything in the macOS App. But as described, the accessibility feature doesn't recognize the items correctly.

[bgoncal]

Ok, then this will need further investigation since it looks like a bug on the webview (WKWebView) itself, the behavior should be the same as Safari.
Please let me know all differences you have noticed between safari and the app and when I have time I'll investigate this.

[misterbond007]

Ok, thank you.
As I know, the accesibility feature sees everything as a "Group", but not as the correct specific item (e.g. text field).

The issue is that, when a text field is focused in Home Assistant, the "AXFocusedUIElement" attribute of the system-wide UI element does not indicate a UI element with the role “AXTextField” or “AXTextArea” is focused.