iOS/iPadOS 27 Beta 5 Megathread

"Just updated to iOS 27 Beta 5. The crackling sound with Eloquence has been significantly fixed, which is great! However, the lack of bass when using VoiceOver is still persisting. I suspect this might be due to the separate volume controls for ringtones, alarms, and notifications in Settings. I still haven't found a way to bring the bass back yet. Anyone else experiencing this?"

Yes, that is sounding better here now also.

--Pete

downloading iOS 27 beta 5 now. excited to see it and find out the fixes for myself. it's great cracklling has been fixt!

Have they fixed the speech choppyness?

I'm not installing any of the betas, just curious what you mean with the lack of base.

wi_fi in the stastatus bar reads fine, the date is still not being read correctly, it just says august 10th, not Monday august 10th

Everything's good over here, but same as the first 4 betas, VoiceOver still sounds like it's missing a lot of its low end.
@Alicia Krage: Make a phone call, or go into an app where VoiceOver seems to lose a lot of its low end. Screen recording with the microphone on still does this if I'm not mistaken.
It'll sound like it's coming through a drive through box, if that makes any sense.
Now, take out the low quality of it. that's what VoiceOver sounds like, on average, right now.

You guys need to try Live Recognition, Scenes. Focus on a subject, human, dog, whatever. As the subject moves, VoiceOver tells you what is going on.

For example, I focused on Denise, my wife. She was sitting at the table petting the dog, using her phone, drinking a drink. Each time she did a different movement, VoiceOver told me what it was. It even told me when she propped her head on her hand. I focused the camera on our 14 year old Golden Retriever Penny. VoiceOver told me how she was positioned, which way she was facing, and what she was doing, standing or sitting. I think this outdid the smart glasses!

Tomorrow, I will try this while waiting for the bus. I am curious to see how it will do when waiting for a ride. If this can be used when waiting for an Uber or Lyft, this is a game changer for sure!

Try opening any book in the standard Books app at the beginning of any chapter - the first page is read correctly, but when you move to the next page, VoiceOver continues to read the text of the first page of this chapter, this happens with any page until the beginning of a new chapter. Visually, the text obviously changes, this can be checked if you use the VoiceOver screen recognition function, or any other service that provides similar functionality. This error occurred starting from the very first beta of iOS 27, at the same time I reported it, literally a few days later a message appeared in the report status that more than 10 users had discovered a similar problem, but now there are 4 new beta versions, and one of the standard apps continues to be completely unusable with VoiceOver.

Hi.
Picked up on a bug am unable to clear all the notifications in the notifications centre.
Has anyone else noticed this bug?

Does messing with the equalizer found in the voice settings help?

I've triet it, but got nothing.

I am now running the beta of iOS 27. This is my first time testing it. I can definitely notice the way the voiceover sounds. It does sound a little bit different. It sounds like when you were on a FaceTime call and you show your screen. However, when my friend did a screen recording of the new image features in developer beta one, the voiceover voice didn't sound different. It just sounded like it usually does. I wonder if it's some kind of audio processing thing that is going on internally that can be causing voiceover to sound strange.

I also would like to warn you that when I updated, the accessibility shortcut was turned off, so I had to turn on accessibility shortcut again. It did work on the hello screen, letting me know that the update was completed successfully. Also, when I joined the waitlist for Siri AI, I was approved within two seconds of hitting the join waitlist button, which is crazy.

why is it that we as blind people have more issues than sighted? accessibility team seems not much good nowadays. i staying on 26 have no intention to go to 27. just sounds shockingly bad. if sighted people had this problem with sound would have been fixed by now.

I would love to see you fix it. Do you realize you can't code in 30 minutes boom it it is fixed? It doesn't work that way. Saying the accessibility team is no good is not constructive or helpful.

Be careful or they might call you because you express your personal experience. You have to worship on the apple alter and sacrifice your views or someone will jump all over you. Just saying it is my experience and last time I check it still the US.

I'm glad image recognition has been included in the rotor.

Holger and Dennis - Criticism of Apple, even harsh criticism, is welcome on AppleVis.

Yes, this works nicely. If only we could have it look through the Meta Glasses or other smart glasses in order to use this great feature hands free!

Hopefully when Apple releases their smart glasses next year it will be better integrated into the apple eco-system so that we really can take advantage of more features like this hands free.

--Pete

Clearing notifications seems to work differently in iOS 27 than in previous versions.

I can always clear notifications now, but after activating the Clear button, the notification seems to hang around for quite a while before it disappears. If you swipe up on the notification you just cleared to try and clear it again, you'll find that the Clear option is not there. Instead you get a "More" button.

But eventually these notifications do disappear on their own for me.

I wonder if this is Apple's response to Voiceover users complaining that notifications on the lock screen often disappeared before the user could finish reading them?

--Pete

I've noticed in beta 5 that some buttons are not activating when using a single finger double tap. This is new to beta 5 as far as I can tell.

Most buttons seem to work okay, just once in a while they don't.

The most recent time for me was when trying to share a link to a podcast from my Downcast app. I typed the first few letters of a contact's name into the "To" field. then, under the "Add" button I saw their name and tried to activate the button labled with their name and contact. Nothing was added to the To field.

I tried this several times and even killed and restarted Downcast with no luck.

Interestingly, if I tried to select a contact that was second down in the list of suggestions, that always worked. I only had the problem when trying to activate the first contact under the Add button.

Hope this can be fixed.

--Pete

Please can you tell me if VO now reads them without no issues? In 26.6. VO does not read them and the screens lock. It does not matter if is messages or any other notification. I probably install the beta when it gets to the letter A on my 16. pro max.

I caved and am too excited, so I'm updating now as we speak. Excited to try live recognition! Although I currently use the action button a lot to witch my phone from silent to vibrate, maybe I'll switch that to one of the tap back gestures.

I haven't done a beta update in a long time. It's been literal years. but I was really excited for this one, so I gave it a go and have had a smooth experience thus far.

Some have commented on the way VoiceOver sounds now and the lack of base. I personally like it better this way, I always thought eloquence in particular had too much base so I hope this isn't a bug. There are a few things with the inflection now that I like too, not sure if those are also bugs.

I do have a question. I have set my action button to do a scene description. Is there a way for me to ask a follow up question for whatever it says, like type it out? I'm not referring to the live recognition or ask about what's on my phone, or whatever the other option is under action button. I mean if I use the action button for describe scene, what if I have a question about what it says?

Anyway, so far I am loving this. Not really interested in watch OS or mac OS betas, though.

I'm not sure if anyone on previous beta builds knows about this sound. It might be new as of beta 5, but I am not sure when this sound is established because this is my first time running on iOS 27. However, when you describe an image with Apple Intelligence, there is a new processing sound. It also contains some haptic feedback as well.

I'm not sure if anyone on previous beta builds knows about this sound. It might be new as of beta 5, but I am not sure when this sound is established because this is my first time running on iOS 27. However, when you describe an image with Apple Intelligence, there is a new processing sound. It also contains some haptic feedback as well.

I am curious to see what issues people are having with iOS 27 that are not running iOS 27. Please list the issues you are personally experiencing step by step. We would love to help you resolve them!

Yes, the notifications now stay on the locked screen for plenty of time so that you can actuallly finish using them.

As I indicated in a previous message, even after deleting a message, it stays around for quite a while, almost giving the impression that it was not deleted. The way to tell is to try and delete it again. If it had already been deleted but did not yet disappear, the delete option will be replaced with a "more" option.

--Pete