Halo makes apps and plugins work with VoiceOver. This page is about Halo itself. Each app it works with has its own page too, and plugins will get theirs as we add them. View Tutorial in the Halo menu opens all of them in one window, with a list of the tutorials and their sections on the left and the page on the right. Return on a section takes you into the page, and Escape closes it.
The Halo menu in the menu bar has Preferences, View Tutorial (this page), Check for Updates and Quit. Everything else is in Preferences. Halo updates itself, so no more downloading installers. When an update changes this page or the page for an app you have turned on, Halo opens it once so you can see what changed, and if you're in Pro Tools or REAPER at the time it waits until you switch to something else.
On a new install the first thing you get is a Welcome window. Halo looks for the apps it works with, which right now is Pro Tools and REAPER, and sets up the ones you have installed. The list shows each one checked if it's installed and unchecked if it's not. There's nothing to choose, just press Continue. If you already had Halo, you won't see this.
If you install one of the apps later, Halo sets it up by itself, the next time Halo starts or the first time you open the app, whichever comes first. It also puts up a regular macOS notification saying it supports that app, just once. Choose the notification and it opens the tutorial for that app.
The first time it runs, macOS asks for what Halo needs with its usual prompts. Accessibility comes first and Halo can't do anything without it, that's how it reads Pro Tools and hears its keys. Choose Open System Settings and turn Halo on. Then macOS asks whether Halo can control VoiceOver, say OK to that one too, that's how it talks through VoiceOver and follows the VoiceOver cursor. If you turned one of these down by accident, Ask for Permissions Again on the Troubleshooting tab in Preferences gets you back to it.
Halo talks to VoiceOver through AppleScript, so "Allow VoiceOver to be controlled with AppleScript" has to be on in VoiceOver Utility. If it's off, Halo puts up a window telling you, with a button that opens VoiceOver Utility. Check the box on the General page there and the window goes away by itself, and Halo says it can talk to VoiceOver now.
Until it's on, Halo stays out of the way. Its keys just do whatever Pro Tools does with them, and pressing one brings the window back up.
Control+Command+Comma in Pro Tools opens Preferences, or you can pick Preferences from the Halo menu. There are six tabs. General has open at login, the Inspector, the Mouse layer, the Plugin Monitor, sounds, the extended keyboard, the double-tap timeout and a Track Lists button. Applications has the same list of apps as the Welcome window, checked if they're installed. View Tutorial opens the page about the app you're on. Plugins is where plugins will go, and it's empty for now. Speech has folder announcements, the gain reduction readout, and how often the level monitor and Live meters read. Fader Ride is how far each arrow press moves a fader or pan knob (there's more on that under Riding Faders and Pan). Troubleshooting has Ask for Permissions Again. Escape closes the window and puts you back in Pro Tools.
If you used Flo Tools, Halo is Flo Tools as its own app, and you don't need Keyboard Maestro anymore. Your keys are the same, so there's nothing to relearn, and everything should respond quicker than it used to.
The old macros waited a moment after every key press to see if you were going to press it again, so every single press was a little slow. Now a single press talks right away, and if you press it again quickly you get the double press on top of it.
A few other things changed. The Inspector works when the VoiceOver cursor is on anything inside a track strip, not just the strip itself. The Plugin Monitor is back, rebuilt from scratch. The Mouse layer replaces Flo Mouse. And there's new stuff too, like moving and copying plugins and tracks from the keyboard, riding faders, plugin panels and the Relink window. The Pro Tools tutorial has all of it.
If your keyboard doesn't have a number pad or has a short function row, Fn and a letter gives you the missing key, in any app. On the right side, J K L, U I O, 7 8 9 and M are keypad 1 to 9 and 0. 1 to 4 and Q W E R are F1 to F8, A is F9, S D F are F10 to F12, and Z X C V are F16 to F19. Turn it on in Preferences.
If something doesn't work the way you'd expect, let us know. Halo sends us its logs by itself, so just tell us what you were doing and about when.
The Halo Team