iOS/iPadOS 27 Release Candidate Megathread

One that's gone under the radar since about iOS 17 or 18, the Dynamic Island appeared on the furthest left of the status bar after the time, after the iOS 27 RC, its now after the time, in line with where it actually appears on the display just something random I noticed by accident

I'm installing it now, can't wait to see waht it's like.

That’s interesting. I’ve never figured out the purpose of the dynamic island for voice users. I have it on my iPhone 15 but I’ve never done a thing with it. It just seems like a kind of annoying bit of extra space to take up all the status bar, but hey, maybe it has a great function. I just don’t know what it is. I’m kind of looking forward to iOS 27. Maybe don’t you know actually successfully update unlike iOS 26.6.2 for me. At least not apart from a Wi-Fi connection anyway. But that’s for the other thread. I’m just super frustrated with it.

the dynamic island good for say a delivery or an uber, to "feel" where it is. you can just touch the dynamic island and it will say driver x mins away etc.
I don't use it much, but it's handy.

For several beta versions VoiceOver randomly says ­‌ no matter what app I am using. I am in the UK and have tried all voices of that particular dialect but it persists in saying that. Has anyone else experienced this issue and have you managed to suppress this announcement?

I use Dynamic Island all the time. I check the Braves, Bulldogs, and Packers scores. I check on my orders. I check on my Moovit bus rides. It's quite handy!

When I'm using the Siri app she will listen for responses after I press the microphone three or four times but after that she will intermittently not listen for an answer.

Is the crackling and lack of base fixed with this update or is this what iOS 27 will ship with?

Thanks for explaining the purpose of dynamic island. I don’t use any of the examples that you have posted here but thanks for helping me understand at least what it is anyway. I feel like there’s really no point in me even updating right now. I’ll just wait until iOS 27 to see what kind of possible bugs there might be anything and if I don’t think they’re gonna be one of the Ernie show stop for me I’ll go ahead and update that. And maybe I’ll just call Apple and tell them we know it’s a little bit. Ironic that she sent the update to fix an update and I still can’t update. Lol but it’s true I can’t.

I have noticed that while using the siri app, it works great when starting a new conversation but if I leave the app then come back, I can't get the keyboard to reappear.
Has anyone found a solution for this?

Just had a reply from Apple, apparently its been passed on to the team and will be reviewed. Who knows

So the delay in notification tone arriving is still there. Suspect therefore it won't be mended soon. Annoying but not a showstopper.

Hi,
No, I'm afraid not. Looks like this bug will be following us into the official release. I tried replying to the ticket several times with minimal luck.

I'm not following. What did you report to Apple? Who were you responding to?

The subject, I'm using espeak and do not want to deal with getting used to a different audio profile.

I've had the beta for so long it's hard to say if the voice is back to being what it was. I think the true test will be watching the forum and seeing if anyone says anything stepping from IOS 26 to 27 directly.

Good morning everyone. Has the bug that caused VoiceOver to stop reading notifications when they arrived on the lock screen been fixed?

Good afternoon.

Great news this has been fixed since developer beta 1 and is still fixed as of the RC. The only problem now is when you attempt to clear all notifications nothing happens; you have to double tap clear notification centre then double tap again to confirm.

As far as I know, you always had to hit confirm to clear notifications, so it's clearing normally for me. I haven't updated to the RC yet and am not sure I will, since everything appears to be exactly the same, particularly Voiceover. Good thing I use headphones nearly all the time.

To clarify, double tapping Clear and then double-tapping Confirm is working correctly. The issue is specifically with the VoiceOver rotor Actions menu method of clearing notifications. With focus on the Clear button, the Actions menu offers a "Clear All Notifications" option which, when activated, should clear all notifications immediately without requiring a separate confirmation step. As of a recent beta this action simply does nothing — the notifications remain and there is no feedback to indicate that anything has been attempted.

For me it is working perfectly. It wasn't but I have 2 phones and they sound the same now.

Hi all!
In the pronunciation rules settings, I now have the option to export added rules to a file and then import them on another device. Exporting doesn't cause any issues—the file is saved in CSV format. However, when I try to import it, I always get an error, even if I'm importing a file I just exported.

VO activities for specific apps haven't been working for me for a while. When I switch to any app that I've set to use a specific set of VO settings, it just switches to VO default settings. Switching to another app or touching the status bar uses my normal VO settings, like Eloquence and faster speech rate.

I wasn't expecting this one to be fixed in the RC, though.

I’ve been experiencing this issue since iOS 27 Developer Beta 1 on my iPhone 17 Pro Max. For example, suppose it’s 8:00 PM. If I press the Side button, VoiceOver often reports an incorrect time, such as 6:30 PM. It’s not consistently 30 minutes earlier or later—the reported time can be much farther off, although it seems to be earlier most of the time. Sometimes, instead of reporting the time, VoiceOver only announces the date. Is anyone else experiencing this issue?

Just updated to the iOS RC. On the lock screen, VO is still saying Third Generation before announcing the battery status on the lock screen. Not a huge deal, just annoying. Otherwise, everything seems to be working OK. Using an iPhone 16Pro.

It still is choppy when playing videos on YouTube and tiktok, to the point i can barely understand what voiceover is saying, it's been like this since beta 1, come on guys

While it's a minor bug, it's pretty annoying. The Siri voice is still very slow even at 75 percent speaking rate. I have to crank it up to 100, and even then it's still slow. When I switch the voice preset to faster pace, it seems to change the intonation and sound more like the narration.

After adding an attachment within the Siri app I can no longer find the submit button that only happens after adding an attachment and seems

Yes, I've been seeing this also. It seems that, when you unlock the phone. Voiceover will see the time that was the last time you looked at the time. If I then touch the time, the display must update and the new time is shown. They really should fix this. Seems like a screen refresh issue.

--pete

All:

In the RC, as others have pointed out, I noticed that the dynamic island is now to the right of the clock. One problem occurs when you try and access this within an app. I just had the Audible app opened. I reached up and touched the clock. Wanting to check my battery status, I just flicked to the right. Voiceover reaches the Dynamic Island, but will go no further when flicking. I was able to find the battery status using a single finger touch, but I should be able to flick through the items on the status bar. When I do the same thing on the home screen, all works as expected. I'm thinking this is a new bug with the RC. I do like that the Dynamic Island is now in the proper location, but I should be able to flick past it when an app is open.
Jim

Hello, does anyone know if the new iOS 27 RC fixed the way that Voiceover pronounces the abbreviation for the word Doctor? Whenever I come across the abbreviation Dr. voiceover says something like drive equal pos or something like that lol. Thanks.

When I have a text field active and use AI to draft something to put in the text field, it does not replace the text with the correction. Sometimes it vanishes entirely and I have to dictate it again to place it back into the text field with the correction.

A couple of questions are you hearing voiceover audio problems with the internal speakers of the phone or earbuds? I use my phones mostly on the internal speakers but will occasionally use the regular Apple wired earbuds. Is everyone getting a series app or is this just for the Apple Intelligence capable phones? I know that not all of the phones are getting the new voices. Are the new Voice is just going to be available for itself or early. We were also going to be available for voiceover? I won’t be getting the new voices as my phones are too old to get them, but I was just curious. I can’t wait to see if there’s any new voices available in iOS 27. I know he said they weren’t, but I always check after every major update because that’s the settings that I find the most fun to play with. I also like ringtones, but we really haven’t gotten any new ones. I thought that we were supposed to when I was 26 but it never came. Oh well.

I'm no longer seeing problems with VoiceOver's voice being crackly, regardless if I'm using headphones or not.From what I understand, only the 17 Pro Max gets the updated AI voice because it uses on-device intelligence. I'm not sure if the other devices are getting any voices that are not AI. I haven't really gone through and checked aside from the Siri voices.

The audio quality of the voices is absolutely awful. How Apple could even release it like this is ridiculous. It’s been reported by a number of people and it seems to being ignored. I think we need to actually make a big deal of this one and make sure its resolved.

i won't be upgrading at all if things are this bad. i like the voiceover voice the way it is, if i am honest, and the 17 pro not just the max variant will have the newer supposedly better siri voices.

Accessibility has gone down i think nowadays with Apple maybe time jump ship

Are those new voices just for Siri? Will they be available to voice users a systemwide voices? I mean, I suppose it doesn’t really matter since I won’t be able to get them I’m just genuinely curious. I really didn’t love those voices like I said earlier. I even don’t use the voices now as voiceover voices because there’s just too many issues with them. They have different inflections and they do when they’re being used with Siri and they seem to me at least to make the navigation of the phone lag a lot using them so I just don’t anymore. Also, as weird as it probably is, I like my voices to actually have a name instead of just being Voice, one or Voice two or whatever whatever dialect that I’m using. Yeah that’s where we are with this. But honestly, if the audio quality is still not great by the time, the final release comes out I probably won’t be updated either. Right now I am using Karen premium on both of my devices and I like the way she sounds. Last year when the iOS 26 public release was available there was some kind of bug where premium voices auto deleted and then just stopped working until 26.1. It was weird. So I had to use either regular Karen or enhanced Karen until I fix the issue with the premium voices. And it wasn’t like just her voice that wasn’t working. There were like a bunch of voices that just wouldn’t download. It was so weird. The samples would play perfectly fine but you couldn’t download the ways to use it. I’m sure a lot of you guys remember that bug. It was really weird. I will definitely be reading the blog post before I do any kind of updating though for sure. I am like somebody who really doesn’t update the first day unless I know for sure that there’s bugs with things that I won’t use. I did do that one year that was only for iOS 16, and that was only because the bugs that were in there, we’re with features that I never use, and it ended up being fine. Like I said that was like the one exception. Plus iOS 16 had all those voices coming so I was super excited about that. That was the first year that we got Karen premium. She sounds even better now, but she didn’t back then so I’m kind of a little bit concerned about updating now that you guys have been saying VoiceOver audio quality is horrible. Just out of curiosity, though, did that happen when it was enhanced and premium voices to over the regular voices, I didn’t matter?

I know that the new iOS version will be coming out in 3 days, but I was curious—should I update to the release candidate?

Hello members. I think IOS 27 has introduced a feature which prevents voice over users to unintentionally and accidentally unlock your phone.
Previously in other versions once your screen wakes and your face is in view, it would automatically unlock your phone. With IOS 27, you have to press the site button for your phone to unlock. This I believe is a feature which works with voice over, because if you turn voice over off, you can unlock your phone just with your face in view.

I don’t have to press the side button to unlock my phone. I can simply tap the screen or pick the phone up, as I always did.
I did have some buggy behaviour in this respect over the summer, but it seems to have resolved 🤞

For those inquiring about how VoiceOver speech sounds in iOS 27, I would describe it as 'flat'. There is no base boosting, equalization, etc. It is a very neutral sound. I had no idea just how 'processed' VoiceOver sounded in recent iOS versions until I tried iOS 27. Of course if this is not expected behavior, I hope Apple fixes it. But I also am not entirely convinced that it is a bug.

It sounds like it may be expected behavior from what you’re saying. It’ll just be another thing to get used to. And then might be one of those things that maybe only certain devices have. I guess we’ll have to see when we update. But if there’s a lot of reports of the quality, not being that good, I may wait. I don’t know. I’ll see what happens when the update comes available. Besides, I always read all the blog post before I update anything.

Hello,

One thing that I have noticed with VoiceOver’s speech is this. If you go into the settings for a voice and change say it’s timbre when you hit the Play Button to here the sample the voice sounds markedly different from how it sounds with VoiceOver. This is true of the equaliser settings too. It appears that the sample plays the voice correctly reflecting any changes you make but these alterations are not carried through in VoiceOvers speech.

Hope this makes sense.

It doesn't matter if Apple considers flat VoiceOver speech to be a feature not a bug. If people hate it, then it is wrong. Sure, they can add a sound profile to make that a possibility, but breaking all ability to use the equalizer is backwards and unacceptable.

They keep thinking it is okay to lower speech quality for VoiceOver while increasing screen quality for sited users. I say that's messed up.
Plenty of us have some sound processing issues, whether with hearing ability or misophonia of some kind. Flexibility is a necessity.

Also, why should quality and likability not be considered? Accessibility should be more than just being able to barely get by using something.

I already wish we could choose voice quality for Siri voices used with VoiceOver. The "Hi, my name is Siri" samples are obviously not the same quality as the voices themselves. Voices that sound fine on my iPad mini 5 don't sound good on my iPhone 13 Mini. 😕

I can't test, but whether I would or would not like the new iOS 27 sound is not relevant because I am only one person.. Though I believe I would hate it. I use the equalizer now, so I'm basically terrified of the future. The year I gave up iOS 15 was 6 months of torture while I learned to process a new voice because the one I used to use was trashed. I'm not using hyperbole. It caused me painful headaches, which in turn made me feel helpless and angry.
I don't know if this will be anywhere near that bad or not for me, or for anyone else.

Could some people who are beta testing do us an enormous favor and write which voices they are using on which devices? I'd like to know if it affects all voices including 3rd party TTS voices.

Is it the same on earbuds and from the phone speaker?

Is the problem only present when Siri is listening?
If so, maybe someone decided that the sound profile for use when on a phone call would be fine. It isn't for me.

Recordings would be nice, too, but that's much harder. The sound would be affected by the recording equipment. They would definitely have to have a sample of the same voice from a device running iOS 26 and one from iOS 27. Then even the different devices have different sound. It still might work.

Yes, a screen recording. In order to find out whether the voices even sound flat in a screen recording. I'm just curious.

In the calendar app, I don't see an option to have an event repeat once a week, every two weeks etc. I had to do that using Siri.

Hi,

after reading all of the comments,I say so will I. I was originally going to go to RC, but I'd prefer to wait until final release like everyone elce. Surprisingly this is the first time ever that we've seen one RC in a major release. Usually there would be two, but there has been 1 and a total of 8 betas. I guess I'll see how it goes once I update this coming week.

These blood posts for the major releases and even mine releases have been invaluable for me. I literally will not even update any of my devices until I’ve read all the info on those first. This is just been something that’s been super beneficial for me so I can know if there’s any bugs that people may be experiencing. Granted we all get her advice differently, but this is what I found to be helpful for me. I know, iOS 27 is coming out on Monday. I don’t think I’ll be updating the first day though. I don’t usually. I was actually told by Apple, but it’s probably better for me to wait for a .1 release as a Voice user. So if they’re telling me that you know, just kind of as a suggestion, they would never tell you that’s what you definitely have to do, but that must be a very good reason for that. There was only one time I ever updated on day one of a major release. And I probably won’t be likely to do that again. Nothing happened to my device, but it’s just something that I don’t really like to be in the habit of doing. This was back when I had an iPhone 8. The latest iOS said that thing was able to take was 16. That was the only day that I ever updated. The first day of a release was when that one came out. But that’s because a lot of the bugs were for people that use bra with their phones and I don’t. So I didn’t know that the bugs weren’t going to affect me. And I wouldn’t have known that if I didn’t read a blog post first. I was so excited for iOS 16 because we were getting so many new voices. I will definitely have to see what’s available for us and iOS 27 for voices. The only new one I know for sure that we were supposed to possibly get with Aaron. That’s a pretty cool voice. I do have Nikki right now so it might be kind of cool to have Aaron too. But yeah, I think it would be really great to have some kind of demo of what voiceover sounds like an iOS 27 like direct the compared to something with iOS 26 on it and then that way we can decide for ourselves if we feel that we can get used to the new sound of the voices. I mean, I’m kind of hoping it’s one of those things were like it would’ve been an issue in the community, but didn’t necessarily make it to the final version or that you know we’ve kind of got all built up expectations about this and then it might end up being totally fine. Who knows I guess we really can’t tell until Monday or after. Right now I’m running iOS 26.6.1 because the 26.6.2 update won’t download outside of Wi-Fi right now. It’s kind of ironic because that was what the update was supposed to fix. It’s OK I’m going to get that update tomorrow. I’m actually gonna be on Wi-Fi tomorrow so I’ll be able to update both of my devices to the latest 26 release anyway. Good luck to everybody and I hope we have a good year for iOS.

My thing is, how do you turn on the advanced dictation?