I am oh so tired of the issue with unstable voiceOVer focus on iOS and wondering if anyone has had success fixing it by doing a complete reset of their iPhone and clean setup.
In particular, I am tired of VoiceOver focus spontaneously jumping to a different location on the screen in that split second right before I double tap. Sometimes I catch it and stop myself from tapping, but other times I'm not quick enough and end up activating the wrong button, link, or app control entirely.
Looking back through my bug reports to Apple, I've been dealing with this for at least 4 years. I have zero confidence Apple is actively working on a fix. At this point my only hope is that it gets resolved by happenstance when they make some other change.
I know from reading posts here and elsewhere that plenty of people experience this same issue. But I've also noticed some users say they encounter it much less frequently, and others claim they never see it at all.
In my case, this problem has followed me across at least 3 different iPhones where I've transferred settings and apps from my previous iPhone. It's also survived multiple resets of iOS settings.
I'm now wondering if doing a full reset to factory settings and setting up the phone as completely new (not from backup) might actually resolve it. But I'm really reluctant to go down this path because it would be such a massive time investment and hassle to get everything set up again.
Has anyone here tried this approach? Did it work for you? I'd really appreciate hearing about your experiences before I decide whether to take the plunge myself.
Comments
Haven’t had this issue, but have a suggestion.
One thing that I don’t know if a lot of people know, is when you are a mid tap, and you want to not tap on the current location, you can swipe right where you normally would do another tap.
For example, if I double tap, and then decide I want to Swipe to the right, I would swipe or perform the other gesture where I would have done another tap. You would have to do this within the double tap timeout set in VoiceOver settings. If you do it right, VoiceOver will forget about the double tap, and realize that you swiped to the right or did another gesture. It also works if you want to double tap with three fingers, but accidentally did too fingers. On the second tap which would be with two fingers, do three instead and it would recognize as a three finger double tap. This does not work the other way around, where tapping once with three fingers and tapping once with two fingers in the double tap timeout window would do a two finger double tap.
Thought I would throw this out there too hopefully prevent accidental taps on the wrong item.
The double tap timeout can be adjusted from 0.2 seconds all the way through I believe 0.5 seconds in voiceovers main settings.
no
a reset hasn't fixt this issue for me, it's just gotten way worce since i got my hable one but think that mightt be cause voiceover doesn't know how to work well with keyboards or something
Nor me
No, this issue has been following me around for many years too. When I get a new phone, I almost always set it up as new. I also did a full settings reset about a year ago. And still I have this issue.
I generally find iOS pretty good and stable, but this bug is one that I am utterly sick and tired of.
Dave
this bug makes me hate my iPhone
Tell me what sacrifice is necessary to the gods in order to fix this and I will comply. I hate this bug so much and it has been a problem for several generations of iPhone. I am literally considering moving to android over it
Re: Nor me
Thanks Dave, I appreciate you sharing your experience. You've saved me the frustration of performing a clean reinstall to only find the issue still present.
Did I mention how tired I am of this issue! 😡
Jumping focus ended when I upgraded to IOS 18
For a couple years I hated focused jumping all over the place. Drove me nuts. As stated in the subject line, however, the problem ended (meaning virtually disappeared) when I upgraded to IOS 18 on my iPhone 15 pro.
Nope
This is the issue that's causing me to seriously consider a switch to Android. It's been with me for 2 or 3 years now, I can't remember which. I always set up my phones as new in the hopes the bug will go away, but it never does.
Split tap
iOS 18, for me, is where this issue really took route. I am on an older model iPhone, iPhone SE 2022, and for the most part the focus issue was not so bad. When iOS 18 was installed, however, I really started noticing it. I have adapted to using split tap in place of double tapping on things. For those who are not familiar with that term, split tap is where you hold an item with one finger and touch the screen with another finger to activate it. This often negates the loss of focus issue that we are all experiencing.
On a separate note, I am right there with Brooke, seriously considering jumping ship at this point…
HTH.