No sound from VoiceOver after updating to iOS 11

Try a hard reset by holding down the power button and the home button. Wait for the phone to shut down and then turn the phone back on. See if that solves it.

Try raising the volume of the phone

first hold the home button and say "turn on voiceover" to Siri. Once you are sure VO is on, keep sliding your finger across the top of the screen while holding the volume up button. VO should get louder.

Hello,

Sounds like an OS issue. I remember you mentioned on another thread you had problems updating to IOS 11. Here is what I would do.

Connect your phone to your computer via the cable. Back up your device. Perform a factory restore and setup your phone as new. Try it out and make sure everything works. If all is okay, you can download your apps manually or you can restore from backup. But be aware, if there was an issue with the OS, doing a restore may also restore the problem.

HTH and good luck.

Hello,

This is an odd one. If you have restored and setup as new but the problem still persist, you might want to take it to an apple store or an apple authorized service center.

A couple of other things. You checked to make sure the mute is not enabled? Have you tried using a headset?

HTH and good luck.

Tried to double tap with three fingers. It is usually what is used to turn on or off speech settings.

Hello, what you are experimenting is a bug of Ios 11. Before updating, be sure that VoiceOver volume is up than 5%. In Ios 11 you cant put the volume under 5%. So, for example, if your volume in ios 10 was lower than that, when you update Voiceover will be muted.

I don't have a fix, but I do have the same issue and here's what I tried. I tried all the suggestions listed above. I also had my sighted husband go in to Voiceover settings and turn up the volume; he said it was already up. Siri is able to turn voiceover on and off and other sounds are nice and loud. I tried connecting wired headphones. I tried connecting my bluetooth headset. I tried turning bluetooth off, to insure it wasn't trying to talk to bluetooth. I tried running VO and then doing the magic tap to play music and then turning up the volume while the music was playing.

What I still have to try: having a sighted person go in to Settings/Sounds and turning volume way down then back up again. I could also have a sighted person turn the VO sound effects back on and turn the volume down using the setting under VO, then turn it back up. That might force the volume back up.

Also I still need to try a Braille display; I have one at work.

I list all these ideas in case they work for others. I'm a longtime user, and my suspicion is that though the software thinks the volume is up high, the hardware didn't get the message!
I did have the volume turned way down when I updated to iOS 11 because I was at work.

I will update this post after I try the suggestions I haven't tried yet.

OK, I used Siri to turn voiceover on. The tripple-click home no longer works, I'll figure that out next.
I then pressed the home button and used my fingerprint sensor to get logged in. (The first time after a reboot after an update you have to use your password, but my sighted husband had helped type that in.)

Now that I was logged in I made the rotorr gesture and swiped up with one finger fifteen times. I didn't know where I was on the rotor but on the home screen it doesn't matter.

I did this about ten times, always rotating the rotor one turn left and swiping up fifteen times. On the tenth attempt, it cranked up the volume to a listenable level after about a dozen up-swipes!

This volume thing is specific to the VO rotor.

Warning to anyone who hasn't updated yet; make sure your rotor volume is up to the highest value ***BEFORE*** you update.

By the way, the Braille display didn't work either. It wouldn't pair, probably because I have to re-pair it after the update. I've always had to pair again after any update and I know the Braille display access with bluetooth was a security hole that jailbreakers exploited, so having to pair again makes sense!

Hello,

Wow. That’s a crazy fix. I’m glad to hear you found a fix.

I was going to suggest using DSU mode and downgrade to IOS 10 before Apple stops signing. I suspect the genius at the bar will simply swap your device after they relize the restore as new doesn’t work.

Hi there i had this issue too but I did the hard reset with the vol down and power buttons and it kicked it back into life when it came back on.

Deborah, I had written about this problem some minutes before I would see this topic. The comment contained this tip that you provided, it was in the accessibility bugs of iOS 11 post. It's sad you went through all these experiments. :)

liel ben simon, have you tried doing a hard reset? Just press and hold the power and home buttons together for a long count of about 15 and then release them. If the phone doesn't seem to come back within about two minutes, then just plug it in. It will bring it back then. Doing a hard reset takes longer than a simple power down and power up. I crashed my Voiceover voice and couldn't even power down today but the hard reset brought it back just fine.

Hope this helps.

Hi guys. I updated to iOS 11 very early, and everything worked quite well for the last 4 days until now. I tried a simple shutdown, but that didn't work; did then the hard reset, but it either triggered the photo camera or Siri... And yes, Siri told me when VoiceOver was enabled and I tried the rotor fix, but this didn't work out as well. Curiously, when I do a tripple-home, I get the message VO's off clearly spoken... Crazy thing... I guess I'll have to do a restore...

Hello, since the OP says he has an iPhone 7, on the 7, 7+, 8 and 8+, to reset the phone, you simultaneously press and hold the power/lock button (on the right side of the phone) and the volume down button for about 25 seconds. Do not let go of any of the 2 buttons at any time, as you might put the phone in DFU or Restore mode.

Another thing to try, have someone sighted help you switch to another voiceover voice in the settings, see if that doesn't reset your volume. I have updated my device with a very low VO volume, and when the phone comes up with the update, the voice will come up at about 80%, though it was at around 5% when I initiated the update process. As others have stated, turning the volume all the way down the up might help. Make sure volume is selected in your roter for this to actually work!
But If you are not getting any sound from your phone whatsoever, check the control center, or have somebody check it for you, see what the volume range is on there? turn that all the way up, as that will move the phone's main volume.
Also, try having someone call you, does your phone ring?

HTH

Hi,
I am experiencing a similar issue with VoiceOver and speech. For some reason, I sometimes end up losing speech while using my phone. I can still hear the VoiceOver sounds, and any other sources of audio such as music, just not speech. Some people have said that turning VoiceOver off and on again is a temporary fix, but this hasn't worked for me. I have to restart my phone completely. Another issue I have been having is my volume lowering a bit all of a sudden out of no where. Oddly enough, the volume slider on the control center doesn't change when this happens. I highly doubt it's a hardware issue, since I never had this problem before updating.

I had this problem. No voiceover, calls and volume graph. I went back to version 10.3.3, then installed again to 11, now I still have problem with voiceover.

Hi. I upgraded to 11.2 from 10.3.3 a couple weeks ago. Using Iphone SE. Tonight I was using my phone and Voiceover stopped working. So I got a sighted person to tell me whats on the screen and everything seemed normal. I called my Iphone with a landline and it just vibrated, no ring. The sighted person I was with is not technology advanced so I had to call my brother and he told me how to slide. Anyways a simple shutdown fixed it. I got my sound back. Hopefully that was just a quirk. This happen to anyone else? I didn't even know how to answer my phone without voiceover working. This taught me a lesson to learn some actions when voiceover is not working properly or when the speaker is acting up.

Hiya, a friend of mine had this problem recently. Voiceover was active, made all the clicking sounds, focus indicator was visible, rotor was available; everything was normal except for no speech in any area. To fix it we tried:

- Changing synthesiser
- Restoring vanilla iOS
- Changing speech rate
- Three-finger doubleTap speech toggle command

Nothing worked. Eventually we added the "Volume" item to the rotor (which isn't there by default). We exited the menus, opened the rotor to the new "Volume" item and boom! Speech was immediately restored. We didn't even need to swipe up or down to ADJUST the volume; which suggests this is some kind of bug.

Hope that helps someone! If you don't know how to add an item to the rotor, reply here and I'll try to help.

I had this issue and struggled for a lot of time trying to figure out what was going wrong. I was sharing the screen of iPhone to Macbook using Quicktime player. I unplugged the cable and things started working fine. Hope this helps someone.