The situation, folks, is this: every time I read a message in reply to another message in a Whatsapp chat, Voiceover now reads the original message before reading the reply. I can see in theory why this might sound like a splendid idea but for myself, I find it extremely annoying. I've read replies to very long messages recently, and having to listen to the whole original message again before I hear the reply is extremely irksome. What are people's thoughts? Is this a feature, or a bug? Do you like the new behaviour? Is there any way of reverting to the old behaviour for those of us who find this annoying or am I just going to have to get used to it? Using IOS26.2 on an iPhone 16 Pro Max.
Comments
You can't revert, but you can work around it
Hi there,
There's no way to revert to the old behavior. But you can work around it. Swipe down on the message a few times, and you can copy it. Then you can paste it into the text field to read it and undo once you're done. I realize this is convoluted, but it's either that, suffer through a message of varied length, or switching platforms. Which I know not everyone is inclined to do, even when you're dealing with companies like the Facebook company.
Hope it's a bug
Hello. I experience the same problem with VO and what's app message replies. I hope it's a bug and gets resolved soon. :)
Sighted users
Do sighted users see the original message somehow? I think that's intended, and I like it this way.
It's not a good feature all the time
If you're listening to a reply to a very long message, it's not a good feature at all. Sighted people at least have the ability to skip straight to the bit they're interested in - not necessarily by use of in-app gestures, but simply by using their eyes. It's a rotten feature.
I hate it
I too noticed this straight away and I hate it. It’s very annoying and slows me down a lot.
Microsoft Teams does this too, and I actually sent them a suggestion last year to change the behaviour, citing how WhatsApp handled replies at the time as a much better approach. Instead the opposite has happened. Sigh.
Dave
I too have noticed this
As the subject says, I've noticed this too. Like other posters, I am most displeased by how Voiceover reads replies to messages in the current version of WhatsApp. Having to basically reread a message I've already read, then wait until the end to hear the reply, is extremely inefficient and I can't think why this should be a thing.
I think this is good
I think this feature is good.
It's useful to know which message you are replying too.
Now in saying that if it is a long message then yes I can see it would be a problem.
Would be good to have a way of turning this on or off.
If WhatsApp would reverse the order
My solution to WhatsApp would be to put the reply first and the original message second in terms of the order that VoiceOver treats each object. Just cause it's visually first doesn't mean to say VoiceOver has to read it first, I would say the same for links where it could put the descriptive bit first and leave the link second even though visually it's the other way round because they are a pain as well
@pat ships
I'm not sure if it's the beta software of IOS26, or the latest version of whatsapp, but whatever it is, your request to put the reply before reading the long message has been honoured. Your message gets read before the message you are replying to, which is the opposite of what Whatsapp subjected us to for the last 3 weeks or so.
@Kushal Solanki
If you want to know which message you're replying to, you can always click on "go to quoted message" via using the actions rotor and it would take you to whatever message that was being replied to... So no need to hear a 3-paragraph message twice...
I hate it too!
I was just complaining about this the other day.
Whenever I wanted to see the original message, I just clicked "go to quoted message" as a previous commenter had said.
I really hope this can be fixed.
I don't see this yet
It only announces something like as follows
Message from sender, in reply to prier sender name, Hi, this is a reply to a prier message. Sent at 9:55 A.M.
Then, there's a way to go to quoted message via VO actions.
I just want efficiency back!
I'm so glad that we are as near as this site gets to being of one mind. I wouldn't mind hearing the reply first, but the optimal solution in my book would be to go back to how it was before. Flicking down to 'go to quoted message' was never much trouble to be put to on the occasions when I couldn't work out which message was being replied to. Now, who said this was partially fixed? I'm not seeing this and, as far as I know, I'm running the latest WhatsApp although not the beta of Voiceover.
Line rotor
It's frustrating indeed and I agree with the last message of @Bingo Little. Second alternative would be indeed to flip the order, the current message first then the quoted message.
But fyi we can use the line rotor to ust go to the current message we want to read, effectively doing the same thing as sighted user to directly skip to the desired content. Not efficient, but a decent workaround.
I hope a fix can be roled out soon whatsoever.
Line otor ain't the same
I agree we can use the line rotor, but it takes ever so long - not the same as for a sighted user at all, in my albeit inexperienced opinion in that I have no direct evidence of using WhatsApp with sight myself. Rather, I'm basing that observation on observing people with sight use Whatsapp and seeing how efficiently they do so. Just put the bloody thing back how it was, for goodness sake! Either that, or mmake it annoyingly inefficient for everyone - blind and sighted alike! For those of you who still think this new way is a good idea, you clearly do not have friends who have a habit of writing essays on Whatsapp. I do.
Reversed
Ok so I’m finding today that it has been improved somewhat. It’s not gone back to the way it was before, but it has swapped the messages around. It now reads the new message first, followed by the message being replied to.
This is at least significantly better than the issue faced in recent days.
The only negative really is that it’s not immediately obvious that it is a reply, unless you hang around to hear that it is.
Dave
agreed with Dave
You do have to hang on for that information that it's a reply. However, it's a fair enough improvement. Bingo will settle for it.