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

Hello,

I will agree that this bug was around for the first three betas. As of beta 4, I am able to read in the Books app with Braille and with speech. My only bug with this app is it won’t read headings and chapter names in Braille, but it will announce it in speech. So, a user has to turn speech back on, then navigate back to the name and have it read aloud. I will bug it if I haven’t already.

I completely agree with the issue you described. If you have multiple notifications in the Notification Center there is a button that says "Clear All Notifications", this button has a "Clear All" action, but activating this action does nothing.

This seems really strange because I test the books app with every new beta version of iOS and I still have the same problem: namely, VoiceOver always speaks the text of the first page of a chapter, no matter what page is actually displayed on the screen at the time.

This late in the cycle I hoped the voice sampling rate issue would have been fixed. My concern is that it's optimisation, reducing overhead for the voice. I can't imagine it makes a huge difference in performance, but I'm not going to update or touch the beta again until this is fixed.

Regarding criticising apple accessibility, we should. We hand over a huge amount of money to them to do their jobs. If they are not doing them, then we need to complain, and we usually have to complain far louder as there are fewer of us. Of course, we need to be constructive in our criticism, we also need to be exact. They still haven't fixed SNR for example. Whoever is responsible for the lack of progress on that needs to be fired and replaced with someone who fixes it. I'm fed up with being gas lighted over this... Oh, we need your logs to fix this... We can't recreate it... And no matter how many logs I've sent, how many times we've all reported it, they still haven't fixed it. It is pathetic, it is an insult, and it is bloody frustrating because we can't do anything about it. Maybe venting is the only option we have, so be noisy, complain, we've spent the money, it is our right and our duty to expect better.

In my experience, several bugs have been resolved. Audio ducking is working very well for me now, and the screen no longer locks while notifications are being spoken on the lock screen. The "Clear All Notifications" button is also working, though it takes a moment for them to disappear from the screen.

However, I am experiencing a new, frustrating bug with the US English Siri voices. It does not read the first capital letter of a word. For example, instead of saying "email," it says "mail" or something similar.

When dialing a number on the phone keypad, VoiceOver now announces the letters associated with those numbers. Like 2, A B C. 3, D E F. I understand why it's done, but I wish you could turn it off.

Yes, I notice it on my iPad 9. I am using 27. I just install beta public 3. Also if you go to wall papers, and slide to select VO does not read all.

I'm noticing if I do a 2-finger swipe down to read, if notifications come in, they interrupt what is being read. I'm not sure if this is a new bug in iOS 27, but it is very annoying. I've had to turn off the automatic speaking of notifications, just to get around this. Is anyone else seeing this? I've tried resetting VoiceOver settings and that didn't help.

I’ve discovered a new bug introduced in beta 5. When an incoming call screen is displayed, VoiceOver only reads out 7 digits. However, phone numbers here are 11 digits long, which means you can't know what the last 4 digits of the caller's number are. I have submitted a feedback report to Apple, but they replied saying they were unable to investigate it; I don't know why. Have you encountered this issue?

HI Alicia.
I don't mind it so much in the phone app, but wish it did not happen when I was entering my passcode. It's a minor thing, but still is extra unnecessary chatter.

When I first loaded this version of the iOS, all my voice voices were there, including a personal voice we have disappeared. I cannot now either execute them change the rate of speech or volume within the rotor settings or with voiceover do I need to reset or is this even advisable while using the data? Should I wait till we go back to the regular after release of final release candidate? Thanks for the advice from Marc and Montreal.

You probably did it but do another restart.

It is out. Security bugs.

Alright so when you clear a notification i have that issue too, the notification seems to clear, voiceover just doesn't move focus to the next one in the list, so annoying

I just really wish these focus getting stuck and other related issues could be fixed

I also occasionally notice the volume suddenly switching from low to high or visa versa. Easy to fix but a bit annoying when it happens.

--Pete

I've downloaded the beta a few days ago, and so far, a fairly positive experience. A few minor issues I'd say, but certainly nothing that would make it unusable or difficult.
There is certainly a change to the way Voiceover voices sound as mentioned by previous users, although for me that is something I've just gotten used to as the device can still be used.
I have experienced voices crackling and breaking off whole words somethings or just an end of a word. I have also notice the entire device audio, be it music and Voiceover also duck itself at the same time, and come back up straight after, which is rather odd, but does not happen all the time.
Other things I have noticed is that frequently I get the vibration and or haptic feedback before a notification sound comes through, this applies to all system sounds such as keyboard clicks too.
Overall, quite a stable beta with a few minor issues that need fixing, but do not make devices unusable.

Yes, I've noticed these as well, other than the haptics before the keyboard clicks. I'm so happy the keyboard clicks are back, I missed those lol.

I've read all the comments and the troubles people have been having has put me off, but then again, I read the same kinds of posts when the new IOS comes out and I'm usually fine. I have a 16 pro.

Overall, as others have stated, this is a fairly stable release with only a few minor quirks that do not make a big difference in what one can do.

That being said, betas are betas and one should think twice about putting it on one's main and/or only device (although I did!).

On the other hand, isn't all software in some sense a beta in which not everything works perfectly?

--Pete

This is why I am waiting for beta that would have the letter A or RC. I check the comments to see about the bugs. Your issue with notification, have it on my iPad 9. It is a pain but better than the one VO has with notification. Not reading them at all.

These days I'm of the opinion that, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Yes, there are some additions to IOS which are nice, I'd not say any of them are significant though. On the reverse, as it is a beta, and as development and bug chasing is, being generous, a cake that isn't cut evenly, it is still unlikely but possible that your phone could let you down at an inopportune moment.

For me, it's better to stick with old and reliable rather than new and still a bit shaky.

Based on past years, I'd say we're now at the stage in the beta cycle where Apple will have prioritised the outstanding bug reports, and forked many of them off to a future 27.x release. Their remaining time and developer effort between now and the public release will be focused on the issues they consider priorities for 27.0, plus whatever last-minute critical or security issues turn up in these final beta builds.

Accessibility bugs, unfortunately, tend to sit lower down Apple's priority list. So I'd be fairly confident that the majority of the accessibility-related bugs we're currently seeing will still be present when 27.0 ships.

We see this year after year, which is why x.1 releases always bring lots of accessibility fixes 🤷‍♂️

None of this is to say it's not worth continuing to file reports. The more visibility an issue has, the better the chance it gets bumped up in priority, whether that's still in time for 27.0 or for 27.1.