Keyboard shortcut stops working then comes back with restart

Software
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Hi Smart Nerds,
I use text-to-speech on my 12" Mac Adorable running Mojave 10.14.6 by highlighting the text, then using a keyboard shortcut in Accessibility → Speech to speak it out loud. I do this a lot. Then occasionally (but recently more often), the shortcut stops working. When I restart the computer, full functionality returns (though excruciatingly slow, so I have to re-set the rate).

I’m wondering if anyone has suggestions for what I can do instead of a restart. I’ve tried toggling the sound settings on and off and ticked the box next to “Speak selected text when the key is pressed” in Accessibility. No luck. So I’m not sure where this is breaking down, and there doesn’t seem to be any consistency for when this happens - one time the shortcut works, then the next, nothing, and once it stops, it doesn’t come back.

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This happens often for me. I found that if I find the menu item that the shortcut activates and click on it once, then the shortcut starts working again.

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Ok, thanks - I’ll try that, but I don’t think there’s a menu item for it. On this forum there’s an older post mentioning a similar keyboard shortcut bug having to do with tags.

I don’t know if it’s coincidence (or because I finally posted about it today :wink: but the speech came back after I woke my laptop from sleep mode. At least sleep is less invasive than a shut-down… So next time I’ll try just putting it to sleep.

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