voiceover and phone crashing.

I have iPhone XS and unlucky 13.1.2 which does not work well when I am using my earpad. I get calls and fifty fifty will work and when VO does not work, nothing works. If I get a text that tends to bring VO back. We have to wait for iOS 13.2 but do not hold your breath to be fix.

Every time I get a call no matter if it’s FaceTime, WhatsApp, etc. Once I hang up voiceover is gone. I can’t even shut down my phone it won’t let me it will give me the number pad to enter my password and brings me back in the homepage. The only way it works is if someone calls me and once they hangup for some weird reason voiceover will start working. I am on the latest iOS version.

When I first read about the phone crashing when calls end bug, I was honestly afraid to update, but I ultimately decided to take the risk, and so far, I have never had a crash like you are describing. I have a 256 GB iPhone 8 plus, and while I have some major focus issues, particularly in the messages app, my phone has been far more stable than I could have ever hoped based on what I've read here. Occasionally, I've had VO go mysteriously silent if I'm on the today screen navigating wigits, but it's super easy to turn vo off and on again to fix that little glitch. Let's just hope and pray that the crashing after phone calls bug gets fixed in the next update.

This happens once in a blue moon for me. The way I learned to work around it is to toggle VoiceOver on and off a few times with the accessibility shortcut. Wait a few seconds between triple clicks of the home or side button. Eventually, VoiceOver should come back after a few tries.

Thank goodness I have not had this problem, but I definitely can see why this is very frustrating.
I have the iPhoneXS. I too have not experienced a lot of the bugs listed here, but hopefully they'll be fixed in the next update. It's really weird how some folks experience very little bugs and some many. Guess it depends on the configurations of the different operating systems.

I've noticed that this only happens to me when I'm using a headset. If I hang up the call with the button on my earpods, VO locks up, but if I have my phone out and hang up with a magic tap, it works as normal.

Anyone having VO stop responding using air pods?

I’m having the mentioned problem and it only happens when I use my Earpods and end a phone call with the button in the cable. It also happened with a Bose wired headset, again if I hang with the button. It doesn’t happens if you turn off VoiceOver when you are in a call, or if you finish the call with the two fingers double tap. Also, it doesn’t happens with wireless Airpods.

A long time ago there was a bug regarding calls than even J Mosen was upset with it. He did had a good point regarding the bug, it sighted has the same problem it would be fix ASAP. I like apple but I am not blind to their issues of not fixing bugs that they may not consider urgent. For those who keep thinking apple rise and set in their lives need something. Again I had been using iPhone since I had 4, 4s, 5, 5s, 6, 7 and XS. This unlucky iOS 13 for me has become a royal blank. You just need to read the many issues people report and compare it to previous iOS.

interestingly on my iPhone eight I never have the problem described with phone calls. If I am on a FaceTime call I seem to only experience a seeming total lock up if I use magic tap to hang up. When I find and select A button to switch to another call or hang up it’s fine. I don’t get enough FaceTime calls to be really sure about this, though. Cited family members say my phone isn’t actually dead, but nothing I can do will make it give voice or haptic feedback, so it might as well be. Only a hard reset will fix it, and then I still have trouble getting voiceover volume back to a usable level. it’s very frustrating. I am a natural troubleshooter so I wish I could figure out what’s going on and find out whether any workaround actually works for more than one person.

Hello everyone. I've experienced this phone crash bug many times and have found a reliable workaround. I've never had to reset my iPHONE XR even once to recover functionality. You need your accessibility shortcut set to VoiceOver. Also, to be safe, you should go into the emergency SOS settings and turn off call using side button.

If you actually need emergency SOS, you can hold the action button and volume button in for around a second and you'll then feel a bump. A menu with power off and emergency options will then appear. The trouble is that if you click five times rapidly rather than three, the SOS mode will activate and you won't have VoiceOver to help deal with it. Turning off the call with side button eliminates that particular danger.

The next thing to talk about is this shortcut. Clicking the action button three times quickly will invoke the shortcut. The thing to keep in mind here is that since VoiceOver has crashed, it will take a few invocations of the shortcut to set things right. In more typical situations after a lockup, you'd invoke the shortcut once to fully turn off VoiceOver and then again to turn it on. In this situation, I've sometimes needed to invoke the shortcut three or four times before VoiceOver comes back on. However, it always has ultimately worked. Just be patient and pause between each triple click. This has never yet failed me.

Hello all,
On my iPhone 7 (128 GB), I frequently experience the VO crash after phone call, whatever type of call it happens to be: FaceTime, What's app, Messenger or a regular cellular phone-call.
I just tried to increase my volume after the VO crash just now and surprisingly, it worked.
Perhaps, what is happening is not that VO is not responsive, but the system volume turns to zero.
Do give it a try and see whether it solves the issue, it does for me.
This would mean that after VO freezes over post phone-call, press the side button to increase the system volume and wait for couple of nano-seconds, VO should behave appropriately!
Good day all!

Well the shortcut does not work. I just got the bug. I was talking to someone without any headset just using the phone. After I finished talking to the person phone froze and the shortcut does not work. I had to press speaker that I use to connect to the phone to play music, that brought VO back. Using blankiOS 13.1.2 and iPhone XS.

so far, it has happened twice. I have reported this bug to apple accessibility. If you guys are encountering this bug, send them an email. I mean, if enough people report it, apple will have to fix it, but we need to take steps to try and make it happen, not just sit here in the forum and complain. This is one way the bug won't be solved for sure.

Happen 2 times within 4 minutes. I was calling to order something to eat and VO stop working. I did everything people suggest. I had to press my SR speaker to connect to my phone to get VO back. This is major blank. I am not happy.

I'm not sure, but it really seems to depend. The first time I ran into this bug, I ended up having to shutdown and turn on my phone, to get v o back online. the second I just turned off v o, waited a few seconds, then turned back on. I did this a couple of times and mannaged to get it back, but this doesn't seem to work every time, I feel its kind of a case to case basis. Just out of curiosity, but if we told apple that this bug is a security breach, I mean, it technically is, do you think they would take things more seriously with this bug and solve it?

My god people, quit with the negative comments about Apple fixing bugs! That last comment just made my freakin stomach turn! just be patient and wait for iOS 13.2!!!

I second Niki's earlier comment (with a little less emphasis, perhaps).
We do not have adequate information about passing remarks like "Apple probably will not fix XYZ bugg".
Perhaps they will, perhaps they will not; but we cannot say with certainty.
The only thing we can do is to have patience (however terrible it sounds and I agree that it is frightfully odious to search for work-arounds to the way we are used to using our devices).
Anyway, let us wait and see!
Have a good day all!

Hi all,
I know we can't talk too much about the iOS betas, but Jhonnathan Mosen discussed this in his latest podcast, and said that this bug appears to be fixed in the iOS 13.2 beta. I am also running the public beta and can confirm that I am no longer experiencing this bug.

to thoughs who say stop complaining about this problem, we won't until the problem is fixed. I'm sorry if a few seem to have this attitude of apple can do no wrong, but the fact remains this is a serious bug that needs to get fixed asap. get out from your rocks and learn business 101, apple is a business, and as such we buy and pay for their products, and sense we do this, we have every right to get after the company if something doesn't work as expected.

I never said stop complaining. I said that in stead of complaining, which helps no one to get this bug fixed, we should do what we can on our end, which is reporting bugs. If we don't do our part however in reporting these bugs, we cant expect them to get fixed

I was listening to Jonathan Mosen and he talked about bugs and how people become upset to those of us who complain about bugs. I agree to what he stated, If you are paying close to $1000 for a iPhone you expect the phone to work. If this was an issue in the sighted world where the phone did not work after call apple be in big trouble and they would be fixing it. I purchase my iPhone, no-one got it for me. I am an apple user since iPhone 4, 4s, 5, 5s, 6, 7 and XS.

boy o' boy, this and some of the other threads are hilarious, so we are the villains and apple is the victim, we all need to take responsibility because we chose to upgrade.

first off, apple does every trick on the book to make you upgrade. i get the pop-up urging me to upgrade everyday now, and ios 12.1.2 has been downloaded to my device for at least fine times. i had to go to settings > general > iphone storage to remove it every time, and you know why? because apple like to tout statistics like this:
https://seekingalpha.com/news/3506387-majority-iphones-past-four-years-run-ios-13-apple-says

apple knows about the phone bug before 12.1.2 was released, the least it could do was show a pop-up urging vo users to consider it and maybe upgrade later, did apple do that? no communication afterwards, either, no apology, no press release, no nothing, and it has been 22 days and counting. and i wonder why some people treat pop-and-mom developers so harshly but always treat trillion-dollar corporation so nicely.

well, actually, i'm not complaining, i look at this in a marketing perspective. it is highly profitable when you know how to crack certain segments of the market and make consumers loyal and love you no matter what. in that sense, apple is a genius.

Wow people, I think you guys can wait another few weeks until iOS 13.2 comes out instead of complaining!

Nikki I sware, you seem to have this mentality of apple can do no wrong I think. who pays for you stuff. let me enlighten you, most of us, pay for our stuff, and when a bug impacts us to the point where we rely on our phones and voiceover crashes and locks up our phones, it's not complaining to want the problem fixed asap. I'm wondering if this bug has even happened to you, if not i wish it would so you could see what lots of us are going through.

To the last poster, I think you need some serious help, you deffinatly have issues! I wish you wouldn't be so rude and disrespectful! I have the right to post whatever I want about Apple! If you don't like what I have to say, then ignore my comments but I deffinatly think you need serious help!!! And it has happened to me but I just do the accessibility shortcut and move on, I don't sit there and mope over this bug since it doesn't happen all the time, but I heard that it will be fixed in IOS 13.2, then maybe I won't hear your nasty comments anymore!

chill the hell out! This bug is annoying as heck, and I agree, apple should have given warning to blind people about this bug beforehand. I mean, for us, this is a security breach bug technicly. Now. Are apple saints? Hell no. But, that's not to say we're angels, either. This argument is a double edged sword. Wes, apple is partly to blame, but we are partly to blame, too. I mean, what does complaining about this bug to this extent do, really. I get it; i'm pissed off about this bug too, but the only thing I can realisticly do? Let apple know. Thats the only thing I can do from my, or our; end. Relax a little people, this is getting out of hand. I'm not saying we should't complain, we have every right, but all in moderation, overcomplaining helps no one. And also; keep this in mind. While apple cares about accessibility, given people with disabilities are a minority; we will always be second. In a perfect world we would be on equal footing with sighted people in terms of reporting bugs and such, and apple or every other company would treat accessibility with equal importance as regular bugs. This is not the case, however. Just keep that in mind for every big company out there. While they may care about accessibility, they will always put our needs in second place

wow, I need help? seriously? I'm sorry if you don't feel that this is a huge problem nikki. like the previous poster said this is a security bug in all honisty. I know for a fact that if this effected sited users this silly bug would be fixed asap, but sense it does not effect them it's not fixed.

I don't make or answer calls on my iOS devices a lot but this does sound like a terrible bug that interferes with core capabilities of the iPhone. There are other bugs that I have experienced and been mad about too; for instance, I can't delete screenshots using the "Delete" button in the screenshot pop-up, but that's a story for another time. I completely understand and agree with the opinion that, since some people pay upwards of $1000 to a company who holds accessibility as one of their core values, huge and consequential bugs like this shouldn't happen. However, I also believe that in order to help solve these problems we have to be proactive and speak up; there is a possibility that this bug could have been caused by oversight or carelessness (which is a frustrating prospect to entertain but still plausible.) It is a little appalling how as an iPhone 8 user on iOS 12 my phone only crashed maybe once or twice in the course of 3 months but when I upgraded to iOS 13 my phone crashed upwards of 4 times a day without any explanation. But still, we need to strike a balance; on one hand, we should be grateful for all the things Apple has enabled us to do, but on the other hand, we are giving them significant sums of money and they are not paying attention to some huge problems VoiceOver users face.

This is very much a security failure. Very much a core function of phone. Apple is very much negligent and culpable in this situation.
I’m on the phone with friend when someone attempts a break in... I hang up with friend so I can call for help. I spend the next 60-90 seconds rebooting phone. I surely hope I don’t die before connecting to help.
Some complain too much. Some are just clueless. We need to report issues. We need to hold Apple accountable for features and Accessibility they promote.
Signup for the beta program. Be part of the solution.

Actually I did report the bug, but the problem is they either cannot fix it, don't want to or I get a note saying "we can't reproduce it" then the bug is closed.. So for me the soft reset is fine, by the way it only takes 30 seconds to restart the phone, it's not really a big deal. And in your case you can call emergency services with the screen locked by tapping the emergency button at start up.

ok, for those who say that this crashing isn't a big deal, it is a huge deal. I just get tired of the people who say be great-full for accessibility. why should i be happy with accessibility if things like this crash happen. just in case some are wondering, I've called apple several times about this bug, do you know how tired i get of their response of we can't guarantee when this bug will be fixed? this is the same as if a sited person goes out, buys a car, and complains about an engine problem, and the mechanic says we're aware of your issue, but we can't guarantee when we can have this problem fixed. why should we have to put up with a silly bug that shouldn't be their for months on end, when a sited person doesn't have to deal with things like this?

It makes me infuriated that VoiceOver users and other users of accessibility technologies are disregarded like this. Though I am grateful to Apple for implementing these solutions in the first place I am astounded by the quality control issues. Take the Google Pixel line of phones. Microphones were malfunctioning, displays were refusing to work...this is the sort of thing that is happening to the blind community (though on a smaller scale.) Also, take iOS 10, 11, 12 and the current version. iOS 10 was stable; there were no bugs like this. Fast forward to iOS 11. New, flashy features. iPhone x. Augmented reality. And VoiceOver users' devices were crashing like CRAZY. Apps were freezing, etc. People downgraded to iOS 10 because of these problems. Enter iOS 12. It turns out that the deluge of bugs in iOS 11 prompted the developers at Apple to take a step back and fix all of them, while scrapping new features they had originally planned to add. This proved to be a blessing for everyone as their devices stopped crashing or otherwise misbehaving (me included.) Now here we are at iOS 13. New features have been introduced: dark mode, all this fancy artificial intelligence stuff, and iPad OS (which is actually a huge step forward.) There are so many bugs in this version of iOS, not just for sighted users but for us as well. Isn't there a pattern here? Every time Apple puts their focus on new features for the sake of wow factor, huge bugs go unnoticed. Seeing as Apple is one of the richest companies on the planet I simply cannot fathom why this debacle has to repeat itself over and over and over again. I am extremely thankful Apple for their innovation and work with the accessibility community but things like this just cannot go unnoticed. Do we have to sacrifice a stable fluid experience whenever some "revolutionary" new feature comes along? With Apple's position and amount of resources, I think not.

While I agree I would just say to yes, be grateful as in 2008 we didn't have such a device. But keep reporting the bugs and keep telling them. Yes they cannot say when a fix is coming but if we push them they can make the fix faster.

I've learned over the years as a musician who release stuff not to give a release date and say I dunno when it will be released but it will be as it's a good marketing ploy that works. Apple are doing the same thing. They are by the way working on the bug as I'm a beta tester bug I can't tell you when it will be fixed. You will have to just keep reporting these to the teams.

we might not have had this device in 2008 but I am not going to except that answer at all, come on. I know some of you have brains, but your not using them. voiceover locks up our phones, why should we except this kind of behavior in 2019? this to me is very unexceptable.

Brandon, you’re just beating a dead horse. I agree with you. The freezing phone is not the same as an unlabeled button. Save your breath.
For too long people in our community have been trained to be ok with less.
If an issue gets media attention... it’s fixed. Sighted voices unite and things are done.
Too many people here won’t rock the boat. Silence gives Apple power, not us.

I've begun to get used to that with most companies. So I just except the fact that it might be fixed by next year. I would not be surprised if by maybe December if they close off bug reporting or ignore our reports, as they will already start working on iOs 14. By the way they fixed the bug I think in ios 13.2.3. I'm not having any issues. This bug to me is really no big issue. I just reboot my phone and go.

Wow, I can't believe all of the negative comments that I'm reading about Apple won't ever fix this bug, have some faith people, iOS 13.2 will be released in a few weeks and I heard that it's been fixed. Shouldn't this information be enough for you negative hungary people to quit bashing Apple? Obviously not because it's still going on!

I agree. Since we are one of the largest communities out there focused on Apple's various accessibility servicesit is unwise to bicker for some short-term victory when there is still a significant amount of advocacy needed.,

For those who are upset because we having issues with unlucky 13 and complaint that we ask for help and express our issues, make sure do not ask us for help because we will point out to you the same you are doing here. J Mosen stated in his new podcast seven. We are paying close $1000 for a phone and we expect it to work. When sighted people complain about bugs apple fix it ASAP or release a press statement. I have XS and I paid $1000 for it and if it can not do calls what is the point?

Hi Oliver,
My thanks for a great comment. You're exactly right. Some of us are experiencing this, others are not. My friend, who has an iPhone Xr is not currently nor has he experienced this problem. People, keep reporting this, or don't. Reguardless of how much or little you paid for a device you will have issues, and just crack on as you said!

no we are not going to stop saying something until the problem gets fixed. apple isn't a can do no wrong company and just because a couple seem to have this notion they in question need to take business 101. I pay for a phone, I expect things to work, not lock up my phone to the point where i have to reboot to get things to work again.

Actually someone with some site said that voiceover appears to still be running, but the sounds are some how mutted, I dunno how I did this but I some how brought my volume up to 100 percent after the reboot or with otu rebooting, so there might be a work around with out rebooting. I dunno. I don't mind just beeing with out a phone for 15 seconds.