what would you like to see in iOS 19?

I'd like to see focus order not jumping all over the place. Especially when it comes to the dynamic island or apps freezing and focus jumps to the status bar. I'd also like to see the bluetooth lag fixed within the Doordash app when I have my Mantis braille display connected. As the app craws to a stall and is unusable. I'm forced to either turn off my Mantis or have to turn off bluetooth. It's a minor ammoyance but a big one that I run into on a daily basis. When I switch to a different display say my Q Braille XL the behavior isn't present. I'd also like my phone to stop restarting itself randomly as it makes taking any calls or doing anything on my phone a chore. There is also the hope that Apple Intelligence will actually become intelligent and do some of the cool things they originally slated in their demos in the fall of last year. Why not just not announce features until they are ready and fully beta tested and release to the public. Intead of folding to shareholders and Wall Street's needs for once. Just my two cents on the matter.

"Excluding bug fixes" :)
Honestly? I literally have no request currently on ios as for my usecase VO already has everything I'd ever need (iOS only). Stability and bug fixes to be very broad. BSI was amazing in 18.

Not interested in new features or shyning trinkets but stability, VO made strong and stable, bugs fixes and more. Want to make sure iPhone do not have bugs like the NY hotels.

From long time people from South India are waiting to have Auto language detection for South Indian languages like Tamil Telugu Kannada Malayalam et cetera we are facing difficulty reading for the regional documents example preparing for a competitive exams and reading articles we are facing auto language detection issue hope this issue be fixed

As much as I would like Apple to focus on bug fixes to make the half of us who want that happy for once, bug fixes don't sell new stuf.

The new thing I'd want to see is a native way to get AI photo (and maybe video) descriptions. Apps like Be My AI are great, but sometimes sharing a photo to them to get a thescription doesn't always work.

As for pie in the sky stuff, I want Apple to buy Oko and make trafic light and maybe cross walk detection a part of the VO live recognition settings at least for Pro iPhones. Make the Lidar sensor actually useful for once. lol

Bug fixes. LLM image descriptions in VO. Much more responsive.

focus on the bugs. I don't care about features apple be trying to cell.

Agree 100% with you. Screw new features. Make the old one work, description can not believe apple does not do a good job with it. They are worth over 1 trillion $ and they can not invest on the iOS to be better? Get more people to work on bugs and development. Make America proud with a great iPhone.

i just got a hable one and voiceover focus jumps constently so just fix the focus jumps and other bugs

I would really like to know more about the actions that are being implemented as part of Apple Intelligence. I find using a screen relatively tedious these days. Most of the time I just wanna be able to tell my device what to do and I do it for me. In truth, I think that the smart phone era is coming to an end. It’ll still take a few years. But inevitably, we’re just going to be using smart glasses and AirPods with cameras on them. And we’re just gonna be making gestures in the air. That would be pretty cool. I wouldn’t mind getting a little bit of a demonstration this year.

interesting, will see if i can find an email and let them know

As much as I'd like to see new features in VoiceOver, I'd like to see bug fixes. that's all.

I agree with you 100%. Of course fix the bugs, but I'd also like to see some changes come to iOS.
First of all, ChatGPT (and other third-party LLM's) needs to be integrated with Siri on ALL iPhones! Period! I cannot say this enough! I hate feeling like I'm left out just because I've got close to another 2 years on my cell phone contract. of course I can open the app and do things that way, but a native AI integration over the Internet would be absolutely game-changing!
Second (and this is either gonna sound really petty or really cool depending on how you look at it), I want a way to add synchronized haptics to ringtones we create through GarageBand. If iOS has the "Music Haptics" feature for Apple Music now, I don't see why not.
Next, I agree with LLM-generated image descriptions. Ideally, this would happen over the Internet so it doesn't have to be restricted to newer devices but of course, this is Apple we're talking about!
I would also like to see the ability to assign another voice assistant to the Side button for older devices without an Action button.
Writing Tools over the Internet, maybe?
An easier way to upload custom ringtones might be nice.
I’d also like to see the return of automatic braille table switching between languages without using the rotor.
This could also sound really petty, but the "no unread emails" message in Mail is really annoying. The Messages app doesn't display a badge next to it when there are no unread messages, so I don't know why the Mail app does.

I'd like an app for the AirPods Max, for configuration and firmware updates, similar to the beats updater app for beats headphones. I'd as well want the third-party voices API bug to be fixt, so VoiceOver can use any language. on Mac, this works. and the acapela voices as well. as well, to access the filesystem like macOS.

Even though bug fixes have been explicitly excluded, I need to say that this is the most important topic for Apple to tackle on all platforms, so this should be main focus of every update.
However, regarding new features, I'd really like to see Neural Voices that are available via Apple Intelligence to Siri should be accessible for VoiceOver as well. They may have a bit of latency, but for longer reading, this would be a big improvement in my opinion.
Also, it would be cool to use AI models even more within VoiceOver for features like image description, screen recognition (to make an app accessible which is actually not out of the box) and real-time audio description (in an individual level that can be set by the user) for on-screen video (no matter which app).

SIRI quality has been declining since its introduction, and its features have always been surprisingly limited. iOS 18 saw the introduction of a small handful of new SIRI features. But quality continues to decline. Time for a top-to-bottom overhaul so that existing issues can be addressed and barriers to new features eliminated.

I want a clipboard manager. The ability to copy more than one thing at a time. Give me the ability to copy something like 10 things. I know that there’s apps but they’re not the best. I want something built-in, and that specifically lets me utilize the copy text to speech Voiceover gesture in a worthwhile way.

full access to the file system and being able to copy more then one thing to the clipboard

Higher quality iOS voices. ElevenLabs has shown us that much more natural synthetic voices are achievable so why is this taking so long for Apple to follow suit? This would make assistive reader a so much better experience.

Simple the only would benefit are those pesky blind people. No money on doing so.Apple is all about the money. How to make it, how to get it and we are a small numbers.

I'd like to see Apple make adding custom ringtones easier.
It used to be super simple & accessible but now that iTunes is gone, I can't do it anymore.
Any tips on using the new methods with screen-readers would be greatly appreciated.

To add Custom Ringthones, I personally use the Imazing program on Windows, free version. Use NVDA with the OCR. It is not super accessible, but using the OCR you can do it. If you are interested I can create a small guide.

Personally, I would really like to have a function that translates on the specific language all that VoiceOver pronounces. Very useful, for example, for games written only in English. Function similar to the Translate addon of NVDA
It would also be useful to use artificial intelligence to make an app accessible that natively is not. Here too on Windows there is a nice project, called Viewpoint, that uses Gemini, who with a button scans the window and with Tab and Shift Tab makes you move between buttons and controls.

Apple must just make sure I am capable of casting apple content such as music and Apple tv to non-apple devices.

OK, so take it as read that I've already said bug fixes. And please no big new ones on launch.

I know this will likely never happen, but I would like to see Apple ease the restrictions on 3rd party cameras so that I could use my Meta Ray-bans with any app I want, such as Be My AI, Seeing AI and so on.

I would also like to get better image descriptions without having to go to another app. They don't have to be as detailed as you might get from the pixies but just something a bit more than the one or two words I get now. I'm guessing I'd need to upgrade my phone to get them though.

And although part of me cynically says that we definitely don't need new voices, I can't say I wouldn't get a little excited if they released a set of new high quality voices for VoiceOver.

Hi all, the subject says it all. I've been thinking about this for a little while now, because as good as my hearing aids are I think there might still be a discrepancy. I say *might* because I'm not exactly sure what the problem is. It could also be that my hearing-aid charger isn't plugged in all the way, or it could be both of these. I'm going to mention this again to my personal assistant this afternoon when he comes up here. I suggested to him that an additional power strip might be in order, but other things have gotten in the way. We'll see what happens. Then again, this issue happens only sometimes and other times when I check the battery charge in the morning it reports 100% for both aids.

Agree 100% with you. Bugs and bugs. Apple need to call Orka and get help. Bugs fixes, make sure current features works without BUGS, make sure VO works well and bugs. Did I said bugs?

I agree with all previous mentioned suggestions. New AI powered voices would be nice and Siri improvements.

Mr. Grieves is right. If I can use an external speaker and an external keyboard, there's no reason why external cameras should be so heavily restricted.

My wish for iOS 19 is that all the old bugs will still be there, and many new bugs will be added.

Apple often ignores our wishes. Let's hope they ignore this one.

Bugs. New bugs, VO not working when an app is running, VO is not reading notifications, VO does not work in English. Many and many more. Hoping Apple makes us happy with so many bugs. Just like a NY hotel.

This might seem a bit far-fetched, but one thing I think would be really cool is if voiceover settings and all settings, for that matter, could be synchronized via iCloud. This would mean that if I change my ringtone on my iPhone, it would change on my other devices as well. If I connect to a Wi-Fi network on my iPad, I would also automatically be connected to it on the phone & any other paired device as well. If I change the voice, speaking rate or some other perameter of voiceover, that would sync too.
In addition, you could optionally back this data up to iCloud, so that if a device restore became necessary, you wouldn’t have to change them afterwards.
Thoughts?

That would be a cool feature. Maybe 40 years from now.

iOS 19 needs to bring better AI and voice integration. I would love to see a voice assistant that can actually perform actions like tapping buttons, not just talking back. I know Voice Control exists on iPhone and it’s technically meant to help you navigate by using voice commands, but from what I understand, it was never designed for blind or visually impaired users. It’s more for people with limited mobility who can still see the screen. The whole numbers and grid system is fine in theory, but if I can’t see the numbers or what’s on the screen, how am I supposed to tell it what to tap?
What we really need is a conversational AI that lives on the device. Something where I can say, “What’s on the screen?” and it responds, “There’s a ‘Next’ button in the bottom-right corner,” and then I can say, “Tap the ‘Next’ button,” or “Check the blue checkbox.” It should be that intuitive. It doesn’t sound that futuristic to me, especially considering what’s already possible with GPT-based models. I’d love to see more development on the screen recognition feature too—it’s useful, but it’s nowhere near where it could be. And while we’re talking future features, something like a built-in diagnostic tool that can help identify what’s wrong with your phone—battery issues, speaker glitches, software bugs—would be amazing. Not everyone has access to an Apple Store or tech support, so a tool that checks your device health, both software and hardware, could be a game-changer.

I’d also love better third-party AI integration. I don’t want to have to sign up for Apple Intelligence or pay extra to use tools like ChatGPT when they already have a free tier. Apple, ChatGPT, Amazon—they’re billion-dollar companies. Why are blind and visually impaired users still being left behind when we clearly need these tools the most? And yes, the voices. Apple’s been pushing more natural, human-sounding voices in other parts of the system, but VoiceOver is still using the same stale voices it’s had for years. The so-called “enhanced” voices barely sound different. I honestly still prefer the default Samantha voice over the enhanced one. They all kind of sound the same, like the same voice with a slightly different name and pitch. We deserve better. Why not give us the option to create our own Neural Speech voice—like the Breeze voice on ChatGPT—even if we don’t have a newer device? I get that Personal Voice takes a lot of power, but surely there’s a way to scale down a version for older phones. You shouldn’t need the latest and greatest iPhone to get decent accessibility features.

Also, Siri seriously needs a rebuild from the ground up. It’s time for it to become a real AI assistant, not a glorified command repeater. A clipboard manager should’ve been included years ago, but I’ll take it now. Speaking of basic functionality—why can’t we copy and paste images in Safari? You can do that in Chrome. Apple should make it so we can copy, paste, and share images without always needing to save them to our device first.

Another must-have: built-in image and video descriptions, right on the iPhone. If GPT can do this through a third-party app, why can’t Apple implement a lighter version natively? No, it doesn’t have to be ultra-detailed, but having the basics built in would make a big difference. And if developers won’t make their apps accessible, then Apple should step up and make more tools that let VoiceOver and AI take care of that access directly. Let me drag, drop, tap, and move things on screen through voice, with real-time AI guidance. If AI can solve CAPTCHAs, it can figure out how to press a button on screen.
Okay, storage—don’t even get me started. The fact that “System” and “Other” take up half your phone’s space with no clear way to manage or delete it is ridiculous. Why are we not allowed to clear this manually? And why can’t iPhones have expandable storage or even a virtual memory card option like Android devices? If Apple’s not going to give us a microSD card slot, then give us storage management. A 64 GB phone shouldn’t lose 20 GB to system files you can’t touch. That’s unacceptable.

So yeah—iOS 19 has a lot of potential, but there’s also a long way to go. Better voices. Better storage tools. Real AI assistance. And accessibility features that don’t feel like an afterthought.

Apple is reportedly working on a revamped Siri, codenamed "LLM Siri". This new Siri is reportedly going to work like ChatGPT and other AI large language models.
Unfortunately, we will still be required to have the latest and greatest iPhone in order to utilize it, because, of course we would…
More can be red below.

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/11/21/apple-llm-siri-2026/

Hi,
At Winter Roses, I use voice control to activate stuff that doesn't work with VoiceOver. You have to turn VoiceOver off, and tell it which button you want it to activate. If there's a button called 'transfer' that doesn't work with VoiceOver, you just say, 'Tap transfer'. As for the numbered grid, I've used that too. I got BeMyAI to tell me what numbers correlated to which bits on the screen, and it actually worked. I just told it to tap the corresponding number. But yep, Siri needs a total revamp. But the thing I never understood about Siri, why in the name of God did it never create contacts for you? I mean, especially for new users, people new to touch screens, they could just tell Siri, create a contact called John Smith, his number is. If Siri could do that, that'd be awesome. And yes on-device detailed video and image descriptions would be great too.

Heard it will not come up until iPhone 20. Which it means iOS 21. Hope it come up on iOS 19.4 but will not hold my breath.