A new version of GarageBand iOS and iPad OS is now available with over 60 accessibility enhancements

By David Earl, 21 September, 2021

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hi all,

David Earl here from the Music Apps team at Apple. I wanted to let you know that the newest version of GarageBand for iOS and iPadOS was released today, and there were many accessibility enhancements that we wanted you to know about. Please check out the release notes here:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212740

Among other enhancements, GarageBand includes the following:

• Navigation in the Track Settings using Voiceover has been improved.
• VoiceOver can now be used to create, edit, and delete automation points.
• Two finger scrub to reset to the beginning of the project during playback now works with VoiceOver.
• VoiceOver now provides feedback when editing region borders.
• VoiceOver now announces the currently visible area when scrolling the Tracks area.
• The Smart Keyboard is now fully accessible using VoiceOver.

...and many more.

We are happy to announce that there are over 60 enhancements in this version. We think that this will make GarageBand more accessible than ever, and look forward to further enhancing accessibility in the future for you all.

Take good care,

David

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Comments

By Matthew Whitaker on Friday, September 24, 2021 - 20:21

Hi. Wow. Congrats. Glad these improvements were finally made. Can't wait until what happens next. :-)

By Eileen on Friday, September 24, 2021 - 20:21

This is awesome news. Thank you for letting us know, and thank you to you and your colleagues for your work on this 😄

By Simon Jaeger on Friday, September 24, 2021 - 20:21

Commenting before I actually grab the update, but I have both an iPhone and an iPad that are going to get a lot of playtime with it. I just wanted to say thank you for the updates and for the transparency; I'm sure it's no secret that Apple isn't typically known for the latter and it's very refreshing to hear about these directly from the source. This is a really impressive list of changes and I'm definitely excited about it.

By Unregistered User (not verified) on Friday, September 24, 2021 - 20:21

Hi guys!
Is it really possible to edit scores or notation in garage band?
Unfortunately, I cannot update my old iPad 5. smiley
I don't want to update my iPhone.
It is fine if the score can be edited.
Cheers!

By John Gurd on Friday, September 24, 2021 - 20:21

This is great. I gave up using Garage Band for IOS some time ago because of the accessibility frustrations involved. I'm looking forwarded to trying out these fixes. Thanks. :)

By Brian Giles on Friday, September 24, 2021 - 20:21

This is cool! Now we just need a good audio tutorial to help some of us GarageBand noobs to get started. lol

By Mlth on Friday, September 24, 2021 - 20:21

Hi David!
Thank you very much for the effort you put into accessibility, and for keeping us updated!
I can't wait to play with the new Garage Band!

Best
Malthe

By Karina Velazquez on Thursday, March 24, 2022 - 20:21

hi, I posted some days ago a topic saying that for me was more easy to deal with the way tracks were presented before this update, once loops were added.

Now it seems like there is a grid which I don't understand how it works.

Once I chooce a loop, I drag it and don't know were to drop it as there is a grid with a lot of cells which are already filled with drums or other things I didn't put there.

Hope someone could help me to deal with this new grid.

By Luke on Sunday, April 24, 2022 - 20:21

Had somebody not recently replied to this thread I may not have ever seen it. This is great news! I’m pretty sure I’ve messed with the GB app a time or two since these updates were made and it did seem to work a little better, though I will say I still recall running into some VO snags. I will make sure I have the latest version and give it another shot. GB users, since some time has passed since these enhancements, how are you liking it?

By Ekaj on Sunday, April 24, 2022 - 20:21

David, thank you for posting. I'm not a professional musician, but I come from a musical family. I've tried out GarageBand a little bit before and was a bit confused. Hopefully these enhancements will clear up at least some of the confusion. Thanks again, and please keep up the nice work.