Beta 2 for iOS and iPadOS 18.3, macOS Sequoia 15.3, tvOS 18.3, visionOS 2.3 and watchOS 11.3

Hello,

Is anyone else experiencing an issue with braille screen input? I have my keyboard echo set to nothing, but sometimes more often than not I still hear the words I type after inserting a space when swiping right to enter a space.

Noticed it as soon as I updated my phone. It’s not much of a difference, if any, but it was something that I noticed, so might as well point it out here.
According to a video I saw, the only new feature in this update is you can now Press the equals sign multiple times in the calculator, and it will perform the most recent operation to the previous answer. For example, if you type 5×8, and press equals, you’ll get the answer, but if you press equals again, you’ll get the answer to 40×8, etc. That is the only thing I know of that is new, besides for a new glyph icon in settings, which was introduced in beta 1. Also, you shall soon be able to use supported robot vacuums with the Apple home app.

Just another way for Apple to control, "the suck". 🤣

Reported this to apple. Annoying bug, although i'm wundering if this one isn't just voiceover specific?
If anyone else could report this it would be great if you’re experiencing it as well.
FB16267941

Can you be more specific about how finder is broken?

This is a bug I’ve noticed ever since some version of iOS 17, where occasionally when loading a website, information such as the heading level will not be displayed, and most text will be repeated twice.
For example, I opened this website, and other than saying heading level three for comments like it normally does, it just said the name of the comment, followed by heading, as well as playing the sound for link which is what it usually does.
When focusing on any text item, it will read it, and then repeat everything it just said previously. This isn’t website specific, but it appears to be an intermittent issue.

From finder, go to the dock. Now, either press escape which would take you back to the finder, or go to the trash; both won't work, you'll stay stuck in the dock. The only way to go back to finder is via vo shift d which... Doesn't take you to trash if you opened trash but either way, you’re stuck. I.e, command tab won't work to get you back to the finder. The only way to get back to finder is either as I said vo shift d, or opening any other app that's not finder, then command tab will work to get back to finder. Odd though, considering in 15.1 things worked normally.

If I am in Safari and press VO+D then try to cmd+tab back to Safari it doesn't do it. I have to go via another app. Similarly with Escape.

So not sure this is a Finder thing unless I am misunderstanding. This is on Sequoia 15.2. Not going anywhere near a beta.

I tried to use the Item Chooser by doing a two finger triple tap from within the body of an e-mail newsletter that I receive each week. You might even be familiar with this newsletter geared at the visually impaired - "Top Tech Tidbits".

Anyway, although the item chooser seems to come up properly when in the body of e-mail mesages that are short, it doesn't seem to work for this newsletter. Would be nice if it did, because this is a particularly long newsletter and it takes some time to scroll through its contents to find what you are looking for. Thus I was hoping I could use the item chooser to find what I wanted.

I haven't used the Item Chooser much in the past so don't know of its limitations if any or whetehr or not this is a bug.

If it is a bug, I don't know how to report it to the beta system since I don't know if one can attach a mail note to the bug report.

Thanks for any advice or suggestions.

--Pete

Renaming a folder with voice over enabled is now possible once more. At least it finally works on my iPhone 16 Pro Max.

So I've tested this both with finder and trash specifically and it seems that now you have to press vo-escape to return to the finder or go to the trash once you've clicked on it in the dock. vo-escape seems to work in all situations.

I'll give that a shot... although not the best workaround. I mean... if you have a laptop, vo is either caps lock or control option which... Both are on the left side of the keyboard; as is escape so... There shouldn't be any reason to remove escape and replace it with this... workaround, inconvenient to say the least. Anyway hopefully apple fixes this, but I guess I'll have to rely on this workaround for now.

So tested vo escape and while this does bring you to trash or the previous finder window... it, nonetheless, comes with caveats, I.e, finder still beeing broken. You cant do anything. Enter doesn't work to rename or open items if on the dock. Command o doesn't work either to open stuff, neither does command down arrow, command up arrow, command w to close windows doesn't work... You get the picture, the keyboard seems to completely not work, until, that is, you open another app then go back to finder with command tab or vo shift d where... things work normally again.

Concerning issues with Finder and the dock, are any of you having the dock and/or top menu set to "auto hide"? I asked because for the longest time, that feature was very, very buggy with VoiceOver enabled. So, just thought I would ask, and suggest that, if anyone is using that feature, to kindly disable it and see how your mileage varies.