Hey everyone, I have lost voiceover speech on my Apple TV fourth generation
I can turn voiceover on and off, because I have the shortcut enabled. I can hear the sound effects, but there is absolutely no speech.
I have called Apple accessibility, but of course, no dice.
I was told to update, to no avail. I also read on another thread from 2020, that maybe the audio channel for speech was not selected. They are, I checked with my mom. I can select them and deselect them, but this does not help at all.
By JLove, 9 October, 2021
Forum
tvOS and Apple TV Apps
Comments
a couple of questions
I recently had a somewhat similar experience, so maybe I can help you troubleshoot this a little. What kind of TV are you using? If it's a Samsung, and if you have a soundbar, there's a setting in the sound menu that *might* be the culprate. Also, if you unplug the Apple TV and plug it back in, do you get speech again? Does switching to a different VO voice on the Apple TV make any kind of difference? Hoping that I can help you figure out how to fix this.
Battery Full?
I realize this is rather a simple thing, but is your battery charged up? A couple of times, I had problems and all I really needed to do is charge the darn battery.
No speech.
Is there a no speech, or speech off option on the TV, for someone who might use it with a a braille display like on the iphone? I've never used a apple TV, so I can't know but just suggesting that as an option.
RE: No speech.
Yes, jusdt as you can on an iPhone, and other Apple devices, you can simply turn off Voiceover. I believe the originator of this post stated that they had tried to turn off/on VO but still no help?
Heres to hoping the problem is resolved soon.
not what I'm talking about.
I was referring to something similar to the 3 finger double tap that turns off speech without turning off voiceover.
I might be displaying my ignorance of the TV eco system, but if I were doing this, thats what I would check.
Do not touch
Hey everyone,
Thank you very much for the responses.
You should be the ones working at the accessibility line.
I never heard from the accessibility team again, except for a satisfaction Survey (Not satisfied, thank you for nothing)
I had to reset to factory settings twice to get my speech back, and because curiosity killed the cat.
After I first reset my settings, I was curious to find out what had happened, because I suspected that it had something to do with that speech audio channel setting on voiceover settings, its the last setting.
You are supposed to be able to choose from what speaker the voice comes from, but you cannot deselect both. Its only one or the other, or both speakers.
So of course, I start messing with it, selecting and deselecting the channels, until the voice is gone again.
I have a theory that even if visually you cannot deselect both but only one or the other, the setting breaks for voice over and it lets you deselect both even though visually it may not appear to let you do it, and you cannot get the speech back even if you select both channels again.
So from now on, please do not touch that. I had to reset to factory settings to get my speech back.
But this should not be the case. I don't know what apple did, but I should be able to play with that if I wanted to, why should I lose speech just because I wanted to know what it was for? Bet you if the sighted population lost the video for messing with something, it would have been fixed months ago.
So glad you figured out how to fix it
I've played with that setting in the past without issue, but appreciate your warning. When I lost speech on the Apple TV, it was an entirely different issue. Some sort of strange setting in the audio menu of my Samsung TV. I never would have figured it out if I didn't actually listen to the VoiceGuide on the TV telling me about the feature in question and saying that it would mute sound. What was strange, though, is that it only muted sound in select situations; only thing that always disappeared was VO. All I know is that I'm glad I fixed it. For anyone on here who has a samsung TV, the setting in question is in the sound menu under expert settings. On my qn90A, it's option three, and it needs to be turned off. It's something hdmi related; can't remember the wording, but Voice Guide clearly states that muting will occur, so I'd highly recommend disabling that feature if you don't want to lose VO unexpectedly.