Make it go away

[shepherdwong]

OK, I've looked around to try to avoid asking this stupid question, I give up.

The cat decided to dance across the keyboard of my wife's Mac Book Pro (running 10.6.6) and now there's a narrow horizontal black box with rounded corners (and no closing icon) that describes the location of where the pointer is located. It's movable but I can't close it and it's always on top. Not only have I never seen this before and can't I imagine why the hell anyone would need it, I have no idea how to turn it off.

 

[Doctor X]

You need to sacrifice her to exorcise the daemon she implanted in your computer.


The

. . . not your wife.


Or, you could take a screen capture of what, exactly, you are seeing and post it. There are some weird features in which, I suppose some people like.

--J.D.

 

[shepherdwong]

Thanks, J.D. It's VoiceOver. I figured out how to close the box but not how to turn off the goddamned app (just kill the volume). It's controlled with control+option key commands but, of course, help, the Voiceover utility, preferences, etc., are all useless in finding out what combination - is it me or does Mac OS become as obtuse as PC OS every day.

Oh, and I love the cat.

 

[shepherdwong]

And the answer is Command + F5. Interesting app but Jeebus.

http://www.apple.com/voiceover/info/guide/_1124.html

 

[icemanjc]

Go to System Preferences > Universal Access > Seeing. You will find a button that will allow you to turn off VoiceOver, conveniently labeled "Off."

 

[DeltaMac]

And, you will also see the keyboard shortcut to turn VoiceOver on or off - Command-fn-f5

 

[shepherdwong]

Thanks all. I found the shortcut but the post went into moderation for some reason - and, I swear, no one was sacrificed.