Hi,
In iOS 17 and before, I could easily, and happily read a kindle book, have voiceover read it continuously, and it would play through a bluetooth speaker without me having to go over to the phone every so often and make it start reading again. In iOS 18, the continuous reading broke, and it seems like every 20 or 30 minutes, I have to stop what I'm doing, because voiceover stops reading my book, go over to the phone, and make it start reading again (ugh, so annoying, more annoying than the netflix "are you still there" message IMO). My question is has this been fixed in IOS 26? I really miss long kindle reading stretches.
By Moopie Curran, 1 January, 2026
Forum
iOS and iPadOS
Comments
Maybe give Alexa a try
I know what you are talking about but haven’t used it that way for a long time and don’t know if it’s been fixed.
On a bit of an unrelated note here you tried Alexa reading the Kindle book. This is easy with the Alexa app and it will go as long as you want without interruption. Her voice is quite natural. The only nitpick I have is for iOS only a female voice is available. Some books need a male voice. I really wish they would work on that issue.
Continuous Braille reading on kindle
I never had the problem where it would stop reading, but now, with iOS 26.1 and the iPhone 16, my Braille display stops at the end of the page. I hope there is a fix for this.
Thoughts
I'm wondering if the screen is going to sleep. Check your settings > display. I'm guessing here, but sometimes behaviours change between releases. If you make sure your screen doesn't lock, this might leave it reading. It might not register voiceover reading the book as an 'active' interaction and, from the way the screen still locks or switches off when locked even when voiceover is speaking, I think this may support this theory.
Working in iOS 26.2
So there's no misunderstanding, let me explain how this works for me on my test device, running iOS 26.2.
First, I open the Kindle app and navigate to the library. Next, I choose a book that I've already downloaded, and double tap on it. Then, the book opens up. Typically it will start on a forward, an introduction, or some other intro nonsense that I tend to skip passed. Once I get to chapter 1, and then use the read all gesture, typically a two finger swipe down by default.
From here, the book just reads, ignoring things like screen lock, etc.
A few things to consider...
I usually make sure I have focus, a.k.a. do not disturb enabled before I begin to read a book this way. Because notifications are a thing, and some of them can disrupt the Kindle reading experience.
Also, I do not use the in app Kindle assistive reader. For that, I simply use Alexa (app or device, doesn't matter) for an awesome near audiobook-like reading experience.
A final note, Kindle does not seem to have the ability to disable word hyphenation, like Apple books does. So you will occasionally hear a break in a word while reading this way. For example, let's say you read the following in some random book:
"stop," the guard said to the thief. "Will you come quietly, or are we going to have a problem?"
Now with the word 'problem' being hyphenated, it will literally read like this...
"stop," the guard said to the thief. "Will you come quietly, or are we going to have a pro-
blem?"
If you can get past that, then you'll have a relatively pleasant kindle reading experience.
HTH.