I have a Sonos speaker and often use Spotify connect to play music on it. However, if I'm listening to something that way and open Spotify on my iPhone, it warns me about the existing session in progress, and when I select it makes the VoiceOver voice go really quiet. (I might have my speaker set to 20-30% or something so guessing that's the volume VoiceOver is using). But this means I can hardly hear what VoiceOver is saying. If I change volume on my iphone it seems to just change the Spotify volume.
In VoiceOver settings, I've set the VO volume to be 100% but that doesn't help.
I also had one instance where VoiceOver stopped speaking altogether. (It was still in VoiceOver mode but I just couldn't hear any voice.). Even rebooting the phone didn't help. It was only when I stopped Spotify playing that it came back.
I know I can use the Sonos app, but it's just not quite as good at accessing Spotify content.
Does anyone know if there's a workaround? I'm ont sure if this is a VoiceOver or Spotify bug. I've tried reporting bugs to Spotify before but found the whole process pretty difficult and frustrating so am a bit unwilling to go there again.
Comments
I have this on Bt.
I'm interested in this myself.
I have this problem with my Echo, and I use bluetooth on that. If my speaker is loud, then voiceover gets loud. If it's quiet it goes quiet. Thank goodness I haven't had the instance of it going quiet on me yet.
I have a workaround. But, not sure if it'll work in your case. It works in my case because it's bluetooth.
Go into Spotify, and find the content you wish to play. Do this from Spotify app. Then double-tap the play button on whatever content you wish to play. Then, once it starts playing, do a 2-finger double tap and stop it. Then close the Spotify app. Here's where it may get tricky. I connect my Ipad to Echo via bluetooth. Then, do a magic tap to start Spotify playing again. You never know the Spotify app. With magic tap, it plays the audio last played or does the last action done, like playing Spotify, or running a shortcut. I know it may sound tricky and not make sense. But, that's how I've gotten Spotify and Echo at least to behave like separate entities.
Spotify Connect.
I haven't experienced your specific problem so I may not be right, but I've noticed that Spotify Connect tends to have weird volume problems so I'd be inclined to blame Spotify rather than VoiceOver.
In my case, when I'm playing something from Spotify on one device, say iPhone, and at the same time open the app on another, like my computer, the system volume on the iPhone, and so VoiceOver as well, goes to the max. Even when I'll try to turn it down, if I keep Spotify open it'll go up again, so I can only turn it down effectively after closing Spotify.
It's not really a big deal for me because I can just avoid activating Spotify Connect and I don't really need this feature much anyway but I once tried doing some research just out of plain curiosity why it has such weird behaviour with iPhone volume and found quite a few threads on the Spotify forum where people complain about volume problems with Spotify Connect, with it being either very low or very high but, judging from all those threads and people complaining, Spotify doesn't seem to be overly concerned about it.
Spotify and Bluetooth sound issues
I was listening to the Tech Abilities podcast earlier and someone mentioned something about problems with VoiceOver and a bluetooth headset, I think, and I think the answer was a triple finger double tap (or a double finger triple tap). But I'm not 100% sure what that does or whether it's connected to the Echo Dot problem.
The nice thing about Spotify Connect is that I can start playing music on my Mac, send it to the Sonos, then pick up my phone and control it. The Sonos app on the Mac is horrible - buttons don't have labels so VocieOver can't use it very well, and it mixes bright white and dark backgrounds which makes it hard for me to use visually.
I'll give the magic tap thing a try It's good to know some problems have been reported, so hopefully they will fix it - as I said before I got put off by the forums because I just got a ton of errors, captchas I couldn't complete and then when I finally managed to post I felt a bit fobbed off. But the actual bug I was having (on macos) was actually fixed, but I'm reasonably sure it was a coincidence.
Thanks to both of you for taking the time to reply!
I did investigating
Your welcome!
I did investigating on my own for this one.
O man! I also have another way to report bugs and issues.
You'll have to do a Google search for it. But, whatever you do, don't use the forums. I've had the same issues you did. They're a nightmare accessibility wise.
Do a Google search for contact Spotify. You should get a contact page. Fill out the fields, and go through the steps. It sends an email to Spotify customer support. If you ever need to get ahold of someone from there, that's your best bet.
I wish I could a demo for you and post it here. But, reply to this post if you have questions, and, I'll do the best I can to help. :-)
Sometimes, with stuff like this, it takes some investigating. Hope my little trick helps. :-)
I'd be interested to see if what they talked about on Tech Abilities is related, and, if so, if it worked for them, and if what they tried, was the same thing I gave the steps for. It's interesting that it seems to be happening for airplay devices too.
Oh that's great to know. Iā¦
Oh that's great to know. I have found the contact form now (https://support.spotify.com/uk/contact-spotify-support/). I'm not sure why I ended up on the forum as it wasn't really that hard to find. But thanks so much for pointing me at it.
Sorry to be vague about the tech abilities - their podcasts can go on for a while, and I tend to zone in and out of them a little. She was talking about a bluetooth headset and hearing aids too I think. It's possible it was an ios 15 thing. The Spotify issue definitely happened in 14.8 as well as 15.
Anyway I will have another play with the iphone and spotify once I get a few mins, and I will report a bug. (And try your trick)
I'm not surprised
I'm not surprised you ended up on the forum. I did too when looking for Spotify contact info.
Ok. I see.
I'm happy to do it. It's realky hard to find.
Post here how it works, and, also if you have questions. :-)
Reported Issue
Well, it's only taken me about 3 months to get around to doing this.... I still get the problem on iOS 15.2 so I have finally braved the Spotify support and got them to raise a case.
I couldn't find any way to email them - but you can start an instant message chat, patiently wait for the bot to fail to understand the problem, and then talk to a person. Whether it actually gets fixed or not who knows but at least there is definitely an issue raised. Definitely a lot less painful than the forums.
Try contacting Spotify through Be My Eyes
Hi,
Have you tried contacting Spotify through Be My Eyes?
If not, give that a shot, and see what results you get.
You might all try using the audio destination Setting
I have noticed that all of these posts are regarding how Bluetooth works with these smart speakers. You all might try using the audio destinations feature. If I understand this correctly the audio destinations feature will change her voiceover plays either through the Bluetooth speaker itself, or through the iPhone. I hope this helps you all with this issue.