How can I get rid of the blue border that appeared on every focused UI element on macOS?

Question

I recently decided to try some new Torrent clients, I downloaded the BitLord and then everything started to go wrong. I quickly noticed it was installing unwanted and unchecked bundle apps, then I tried my best to remove all of them. But now, this border is not going away anytime soon. I tried to enable VoiceOver then disable it, not working. I even dig into the VoiceOver Utility hoped I can find some options would fix this. I tried to restart the system into Safe Mode, and the border was still there. I even tried to perform a Repair Disk Permission and Verify Startup Disk with CleanMyMac 3. None of the above worked.

Can you please tell me how to get rid of it, its not causing any trouble, but I just find it irritating. I think wipe out the system and reinstall macOS would get me there, and I do have a TimeMachine backup that backups itself every 2 hrs. But I'm afraid when I use Migration Assistant this border will be carried with the old backup.

I'm running macOS 10.12.3 (16D32).

Best Regards.

Solution

The focus ring is a standard part of macOS, since forever. If it's on a button, you can activate that button by hitting the spacebar . You can move it to the next control by hitting tab .

There's a preference in System Preferences to let it go to any control, or just to text fields. You probably accidentally changed that preference and now you're seeing the focus ring show up on controls other than text fields, so it seems strange to you. Change that preference back and things will be back to what you were accustomed to.

The preference is System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Full Keyboard Access: