This may not be a complete problem solver for this issue but it sure seems to be helping me a ton. I've been fighting with the iOS cursor focus issue since 15 came out. No screen was safe, even on my lock screen the cursor would just leap to random things at the top of the page and it was miserable. So I started messing around in settings, and lo! It's the damn rotor again, or so it seems.
In rotor there's a setting called direct touch and that seems to have been the problem. Or at least a big chunk of the problem. I had to manually turn it off for every app on my phone as they were all automatically selected to use direct touch. Letting Voiceover control your screen with no extra input is a bad idea it turns out. Now if I could just get the lag on paje loads to stop...
If you're having focus issues try turning off rotor direct touch. It's like I have a new phone!
Edit: Well, I seem to have jumped the gun, alas. But my phone does seem to be cooperating a little better with direct touch disabled. Been messing around with other settings and changing some of the specific notifications in Audio for certain sounds and haptics is sort of doing something but still nothing really definitive yet. If anyone else is fiddling around trying to fix this issue feel free to chime in here! I’m so very sick of the focus issue and it does seem like it may be something specific in Voiceover settings that either gets triggered with a new update that adds something weird or is a toggle somewhere that is carrying from phone to phone for some of us. (I have had the exact same focus issues on three different phones since iOS 15 and at this point I can only assume there is something in my settings making it happen but who even knows what it could be.)
Comments
Why did you disable direct touch for each and every single app?
Well, you should be able to disable it for apps where you don't need it, and VoiceOver should already act according to the individual settings for each app. There are apps on my phone that do require direct touch, so I have to enable it for them, but does enabling direct touch for certain apps really effect VoiceOver's behavior in others as well?
I thought it did but after…
I thought it did but after more messing around it seems like direct touch has no impact on the cursor focus after all.
I'm just being driven nuts by this bug. I can't use my phone with screen curtain on, the cursor is never where it says it is, it freezes constantly even with the rotor function that was the problem turned off, it jumps around even on the lock screen... And this has been an issue for me across multiple phones and for years now. I absolutely hate it and I badly want to know what magic setting combination the people who don't have to endure this are using.
What exactly is direct touch?
What is it exactly? First time I am hearing about it.
Possible solution to focus? You decide..
Disclaimer: This is not an Android vs Apple post. Trolls need not respond.
So, recently I upgraded to an iPhone 15 Pro. Was rocking a SE2 before, on iOS 16.7.2. Before that, I got to play around with a new Android, as I have a friend whose an Android enthusiast. Not that it matters, but for clarity sake, it was a Pixel 8 Pro.
I mention all of this because my friend setup a profile on her Pixel and let me play around with TalkBack (and Android) 14.
One thing I found useful on the Android side was that their 'rotor' uses a 3 finger swipe to access, followed by a single finger up and down to work within your chosen granularity.
So, once I picked up my 15 Pro, I decided to mess around with the commands settings under VO settings. I made a setup where using 2 fingers to swipe left or right could navigate rotors, and swiping up and down with 2 fingers let me work within my chosen rotor item.
Next, I set 1 finger swipe up and down to simply move to the item above or below respectively.
Ultimately, this gives me a permanent 'Vertical Navigation' regardless of what screen, app, or whatever focus is on. If I need to use a rotor item, I simply swipe up and down with 2 fingers.
Of course, this takes a little getting used to, but some of you may or may not remember a time in earlier iOS where the gesture for 1 finger swipe up and/or down had a duel function; moving between the items on screen above and below (and) swiping through rotor item controls.
Anyways, I hope this is useful to someone.
Tah. 😎
PS The 2 finger rotate gesture is still there for Rotor. Fear not!
I attempted to try the one…
I attempted to try the one finger swipe up/down change but it turns out that gesture is so necessary for interacting with everything on the phone I had to change it back. It sounds nice but I’ve been using these phones a certain way for at least a decade now. And I’m not sure how this would stop the real problem, which is the cursor jumping to the top of anything without warning or notification.
Magic Retina; is it possible…
Magic Retina; is it possible you have back tap turned on? i found backed tap kind of sensitive and so I had to turn it off to keep strange things from happening. it sounds like you're having more focus problems than usual. I know you don't want to do it or maybe you have done it but setting up your phone is new sometimes fixes things. I just did that and it seems like my phone is a little bit more stable than it was. other possibilities are Bluetooth devices connected. Or a screen protector that may make your touch gestures activate even when you're not actually touching the phone. I also wonder if this is the same device since you updated and the problem started happening. Just a think.
Brian Just trying your…
Brian
Just trying your layout. It'll take a while to get used to, but I think it's helpful. I added four finger swipe up and down to. Read all and read from cursor.
@ Bobcat
I've had this problem on three devices and since before back tap existed, so it's not that. I have also completely reset and redone my settings a few times and that has never solved the issue.
More messing around
This hasn't solved everything but I did find when I disabled Screen Recognition in settings that helped reduce the amount of jumping around by the cursor. Which is weird because it was turned off all the time, only enabled via rotor as needed, and yet it does seem to have been part of the problem. And it's just screen recognition. I still have the ability to read text in images turned on (completely disabling everything in Voiceover Recognition didn't change much). I'm determined to sort this out.
Interesting indeed.
I'm now considering giving it a try. Why not use two finger swipes to move to the item above or below? I can assign some other gesture to reading from the cursor, and the "read all" or "read from top" command is one that I hardly ever use already.
Comments and replies
@Rasgueo
- Direct Touch lets you interact with the touch screen without VoiceOver controls overriding the system defaults (those of iOS without VO). Useful mainly for those with low vision, but can be used by anyone while VO is running. Also handy for certain games.
@Magic Retina
- While it is true the 1 finger swipe up and down is used system wide with VO, it is not really exclusive. That is more to the point that you, like each and every one of us, have gotten used to the 'default' way in which we interact with VO in iOS. And while my method is far from perfect, it takes this into consideration. Sure, it may take time to learn this new way of doing things, but is that really so bad?
- It is up to you, of course, but I have found focus to be far less frustrating this way, thus my sharing with the class. So to speak... 😆
@Bobcat
- Thats awesome. I never really use the 'Read from top' function, so my 4 finger swipe up moves focus to the status bar. 🤷🏼♂️
@Enes Deniz
- Sure you could do that. Absolutely. My way just makes for very fluid 1 finger navigation across (ANY) screen. 😎🤷🏼♂️
Got it.
There's but one reason why I don't want to assign one-finger swipe-up or down to vertical navigation: So many things we do with the rotor, and I'm afraid it'll take quite a while for me to get used to using these gestures for vertical navigation instead, and then, if necessary, back to their default function if I somehow happen to use someone else's device.
The new rotor toggle
The new rotor toggle mentioned above may be more to your liking. It essentially locks the rotor to the last thing you selected, i.e. if you switched your rotor to Headings, it will pretty much stay there until you change it again.