Dial mode

What it is

Everything in this add-on can be reached from an ordinary keyboard, with no volume dial and no volume keys. Press NVDA + Applications to turn Dial mode on. While it is on, the arrow keys and a few others do the whole job. You rarely have to turn it off, because everything ends Dial mode except playing a radio station and asking a question. Pressing the same combination again turns it off too.

The Applications key is the one that opens a context menu, usually to the left of the right-hand Control key. If your keyboard does not have one, you can give Dial mode any gesture you like: open NVDA's Input Gestures dialog, find the Dial heading, and add a gesture to "Turn Dial mode on or off".

The keys

• Up and Down: choose the row. There are three: Categories, Items, and Clipboard history.
• Left and Right: move backward and forward within the row you are on. This is exactly what turning the dial does.
• Enter: do the main thing. On the Items row that launches what you are on.
• Space: do the second thing, where the item has one.
• Escape: leave Dial mode without activating anything.

The three rows are the three things the dial does with a held modifier, so anything you read elsewhere in this help about NVDA + turn, Shift + turn or Control + turn applies here too. Up and Down simply choose which of them the arrow keys are working on.

Where the rows put you

Each time you land on a row, Dial says which row it is and what you are on inside it, for example "Items. BBC Radio 4." Nothing is lost by moving between rows: your place in each one is kept, so going up to Categories and back down to Items returns you to the item you were on.

The Clipboard history row is only there when clipboard history is switched on in Add-on Settings. With it off there are two rows rather than three.

There is no double press here

On a dial, some kinds of item do a second thing if you press twice quickly, which means the first press has to wait a third of a second to find out whether a second one is coming. Dial mode has no such wait. Enter and Space each mean one thing and both act the instant you press them.

What Space does is exactly what a double press does on the dial:

• A website puts its address on your clipboard, and does not open the page.
• A folder tells you what is in it, and does not open it.
• A file tells you how big it is and when it last changed.
• A snippet, or an entry in your clipboard history, pastes itself into what you are typing.
• A radio station that is playing sets the sleep timer, or cancels one already running. This one ends Dial mode, since by then you have chosen your station.
• A workspace tells you what it holds instead of opening it.
• A clock copies its reading to the clipboard.
• On the Categories row, Space turns the radio off from wherever you are.

An application, a help page and an NVDA command have nothing on Space, and say so rather than doing anything you did not ask for.

Getting out again

Mostly you do not have to. Dial mode turns itself off, and the whole rule is one sentence: everything ends Dial mode except playing a radio station and asking a question. So turning it on is usually the only thing you have to remember.

There are two questions to ask an item, and both keep you in Dial mode:

• A clock's time, on Enter.
• What is in a folder, how big a file is, or what a workspace holds, on Space.

You asked those so you could decide what to do next, and the arrow keys are how you decide, so taking them away would be taking them away mid-question. Playing a station keeps you in for the same kind of reason: you can carry on turning to hear what else is on. Setting its sleep timer does not, because by then you have chosen.

Everything else ends it:

• Launching something. The window you opened has the keyboard now, and it announces itself as it always would.
• Running an NVDA command. The command says what it did, as it always does, and then you carry on from the keyboard.
• Copying or pasting. After a copy your next move is somewhere else, so the arrow keys go back to whatever you are in. The copy says so: you hear "Copied Signature. Dial mode off."
• Setting or cancelling a station's sleep timer.
• Any other key. It ends Dial mode and then does its normal job, so nothing is swallowed and you never have to guess how to get out.
• Another window coming to the front, however it got there.
• NVDA + Applications again, or Escape. Both say "Dial mode off".

You can still use the dial

Dial mode does not replace anything. If you have a dial it keeps working, including while Dial mode is on, and the two share the same place in every list. Turning the dial to a different category and then pressing Down in Dial mode puts you in the items of the category you turned to.