[Autocomplete] when VoiceOver is on, dropdown closes as soon as the mouse hovers over an option

[nate-summercook]

Steps to reproduce

Steps:

1. Open this link to live example: https://mui.com/material-ui/react-autocomplete/
2. Turn on VoiceOver
3. Open any Autocomplete dropdown
4. Try to select any option with mouse or keyboard
5. Notice that it just vanishes before you can actually choose anything

Current behavior

Dropdown closes as soon as an option gets the focus. This makes the component completely unusable if VoiceOver is turned on.

Expected behavior

Autocomplete should behave the same when VoiceOver is turned on.

Context

No response

Your environment

npx @mui/envinfo

  System:
    OS: macOS 26.2
  Binaries:
    Node: 22.20.0 - /Users/myusername/.volta/tools/image/node/22.20.0/bin/node
    npm: 10.9.3 - /Users/myusername/.volta/tools/image/node/22.20.0/bin/npm
    pnpm: Not Found
  Browsers:
    Chrome: 144.0.7559.110
    Edge: 144.0.3719.104
    Firefox: Not Found
    Safari: 26.2
  npmPackages:
    @emotion/react: 11.14.0 => 11.14.0
    @emotion/styled: 11.14.1 => 11.14.1
    @mui/core-downloads-tracker:  7.3.7
    @mui/lab: 7.0.1-beta.21 => 7.0.1-beta.21
    @mui/material: 7.3.7 => 7.3.7
    @mui/private-theming:  7.3.7
    @mui/styled-engine:  7.3.5
    @mui/system: 7.3.7 => 7.3.7
    @mui/types:  7.4.10
    @mui/utils:  7.3.7
    @mui/x-date-pickers: 8.24.0 => 8.24.0
    @mui/x-internals:  8.24.0
    @types/react:  19.2.7
    react: 18.3.1 => 18.3.1
    react-dom: 18.3.1 => 18.3.1
    typescript: 5.9.3 => 5.9.3

This is not very relevant in this context, as I'm reproducing it on the @mui website.

Search keywords: autocomplete, a11y, voiceover

[mj12albert]

@nate-summercook I couldn't reproduce this, are you doing something differently?

material-autocomplete-VO.mov

[nate-summercook]

Did you test it on a Mac OS 26.2 with Firefox?

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/ebe2babc-9a99-452a-be22-d05b2de154b0
This is what it looks like for me. Hovering over the options closes the dropdown, clicking down on the arrow keys also closes the dropdown instead of going through the options.
I tried it on a colleagues Mac in Firefox, same behavior. Chorme seems to work somehow.

[mj12albert]

It repros in Firefox but not Chrome nor Safari