How to Get Rid of the Orange Box on Chromebook

Heather April 17, 2021

If you’re just using your Chromebook as usual one day and suddenly an orange box appears on your screen, or your Chromebook starts talking to you out of nowhere, don’t be alarmed. Your Chromebook isn’t crashing, the display hasn’t gone haywire, and everything is fine. All that’s happened is that you’ve somehow activated some accessibility features on your machine.

How to Get Rid of the Orange Box on Chromebook

ChromeVox is Google’s screen reader and adaptive display technology for Chromebook. Users who have visual impairments use these features to make the machine work better for them. However, if you don’t have a visual impairment, then these features will inconvenience you (which is why they are normally turned off). Fortunately, it’s easy to fix this situation if it arises.

Enabling/Disabling ChromeVox

When you press Ctrl + Alt + Z on your Chromebooks keyboard, whether intentionally or accidentally, it enables your ChromeVox. There is also a setting to turn ChromeVox on or off in your Chromebook’s accessibility settings. To get to your Chromebooks accessibility settings follow these steps;

Click on the box in the lower right-hand side of your Chromebook where the time, Wi-Fi, battery and your Google account picture’s are located.
Next, click on Settings where the cog icon is displayed.
Once you’ve opened the settings box, scroll to the bottom.
Click on Show advanced settings then scroll down until you see accessibility.
If the checkbox next to Enable ChromeVox (spoken feedback) is checked, uncheck it.

By unselecting ChromeVox on your Chromebook, the orange box will no longer be visible on your screen and your Chromebook will quit speaking aloud to you. You can also press Ctrl + Alt + Z to quickly toggle the ChromeVox accessibility setting on or off.

If the ChromeVox setting box isn’t checked off in the Accessibility settings on your Chromebook and the shortcut key doesn’t work then power down your Chromebook completely and reboot it. Doing this has also been know to resolve the orange box issue.

So, whether your puppy, kitten, other household pet, child or you’ve turned on Google ChromeVox without knowingly doing so, you’re now able to figure out how to turn it off.

Do you have any great tips on using ChromeVox on your Chromebook? Please share them with us in the comment section below!