iOS 18.0 VoiceOver problems

Most people you talk to will recommend that you restart your device every time after an update, just in case something went awry in the installation, just to clear some things up.

I personally don't do this as I've never really had many issues that have forced me to do that, but most other people will tell you, to restart after an update.

You could also possibly reset all settings, but be aware you will have to reconnect to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other such things. Nothing like your Apple ID from what I know should be affected,

Hi Hana,

I have a couple of suggestions that might be useful for you.

1. Try switching into a different voice. I have noticed that some of the VoiceOver voices need to be re-downloaded after the iOS 18 update due to bizarre issues.
2. Go to settings, then accessibility, then voiceover, then verbosity, and make sure you have numbers set to “words” rather than “numbers”.

Someone has posted on here that having numbers set to read as numbers causes voiceover to read out a lot of gibberish. So hopefully the suggestions will help you out.

Best of luck.

Hi Hana,
What you describe sounds like a variant of an issue that has surfaced occasionally throughout the years, and if this is what I think it is, there may possibly be a way around it. What voice are you using, and what language and region is your phone set to?

The issue you described in your original post is indeed very strange.
I've upgraded my iPhone 15 ProMax to iOS 18 overnight and I have never experience the issues you mentioned.
My language is set to English US and my region is set to Thailand. I'm using the Samantha Enhanced voice for VO.

Hi Hana,
Are you able to try using a voice from another language, or to try changing your region settings with the existing voice you are using?

It works for me.

I understand that's not ideal because it's not Japanese but it should work for now if you don't mind things being in English.

I'd recommend reporting this to accessibility@apple.com explaining what you've done and what voiceover says.

Hopefully that helps them to fix this issue in a future update.

It's really not good that these voices do this. I've heard people insist there are blind people working at apple. I believe them but I wonder why these bugs don't get fixed ASAP if that's true.

Perhaps it's a bad communication issue like in many companies.

I updated my phone (an SE 2020) on Monday. During the update, my Siri 1 voice, which had been male, suddenly switched to female. I played the Siri voices & #3 seemed to be male, so I downloaded it & selected it as my voice.

When the update completed, it appeared to be normal. I restarted my device & entered my password. Suddenly Voiceover began making a puttputt sound, almost like Morse code. When I turned Voiceover off, the putt putt sound stopped, but obviously then I didn't have speech. My thought was that perhaps changing from a Siri voice to a VO 1 might help. I had to call Apple accessibility support to help me do that, of course.

I changed to Alex, & things seemed to work, but I didn't really like it. I finally changed to Evan, but I'm not crazy about it either. I went back into Siri voices, & Siri 1 had changed from a female back to a male voice again. But when I tried to use it, Voiceover became like static on an AM radio. I was able to change back to Evan w/o help from Apple this last time.

I also noticed yesterday that my screen was reversed, ie, if I had the rotor set to characters & swiped right to spell the word, it actually spelled backwards, as in m-e-s-s-a-g-e-s was s-e-g-a-s-s-e-m.

So I'm suggesting that perhaps before updating, if you're using a Siri voice, you might want to consider switching to a VO voice & try changing back to Siri once the update is completed. I think if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have updated.

If nothing else works, go to General and then reset the settings. That might help.

Well what I'm discovering is that even after redownloading Siri voices, I still can't use them w/VO. They work anywhere from 2-5min, & then it's nothing but white noise. I really don't like the voices VO offers, but I guess for now that's what I'll have to use. Guys, my advice is just avoid Siri voices for now, & I'd have to say that's especially true if you have an SE phone. I'd also observe that my phone feels hotter than normal when running them, so perhaps there's some kind of overheating issue coming into play. The fact that VO will work for a certain length of time using a Siri voice also suggest that. BTW, I only used Siri voices 1 & 3. I don't think I want to experiment w/others, thank you very much. I've had too many close calls re: losing speech already today. I sure hope Apple takes a look at this.

I think that the Se 2020 is getting old. Mine already played crazy with 17.

Hi Hana,
Referencing your previous comment, this sounds like a software issue--thus a new phone would not fix it. I would definitely report this to Apple Accessibility.