iOS 17 developer beta four is out! Bugs and findings can go here.

By Levi Gobin, 25 July, 2023

Forum
Apple Beta Releases

Apple today has released iOS 17 beta four for registered developers. If you find any new features, bug fixes, or more bugs, please feel free to leave them here.

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Comments

By Levi Gobin on Saturday, July 22, 2023 - 00:26

There is a new toggle switch in the eloquence per Voice settings which will allow you to toggle on and off the community dictionary. by default the setting is set to off.
As far as the eloquence higher sample rate having no teeth, that is the exact same as in beta three.

By danno5 on Saturday, July 22, 2023 - 00:26

The mute switch no longer works, to mute and unmute the phone. You have to set the mute switch to whatever option you want and reboot the phone.
It’s a very strange bug.

By Levi Gobin on Saturday, July 22, 2023 - 00:26

I didn’t even think to try the mute switch until I saw that. Just like you said it doesn’t do anything at all. That’s hilariously funny, unless you’re in a meeting and you need to reboot your phone just so that your phone doesn’t make any notification noises?
I will report it

By Dennis Long on Saturday, July 22, 2023 - 00:26

Is there a specific setting? Remember the iPhone 15 pro is supposed to have a customizable action button.

By Dennis Long on Saturday, July 22, 2023 - 00:26

under general and keyboard turn the following off.
auto correction and predictive
2 spell check your mail. It lets you find and choose the replacement but it doesn't go away like it used to after corrected.

By danno5 on Saturday, July 22, 2023 - 00:26

A workaround to regain the functionality of the mute switch is to use the back tap feature and set one of the options to mute.
That works with no issues.
I do think it’s a bug, I believe there may be code in iOS for the iPhone 15 pro, but I don’t believe it’s supposed to be active on all the devices

By Dominic on Saturday, July 22, 2023 - 00:26

All the things that places like MacRumors and 9to5Mac say, all of those rumours are just what they are, rumours, we don’t know for sure Apple and action button to the iPhone 15 pro, we don’t know anything for sure, we have to just wait till September

By Dennis Long on Saturday, July 22, 2023 - 00:26

Dominic They are pretty reliable and more then one reliable sourcde has confirmed it. I would be surprised if that isn't the case.

By Cobbler on Saturday, July 22, 2023 - 00:26

After some testing and checking with someone sighted, it appears that the issue with the Mute button is indeed a VoiceOver bug. When VoiceOver is disabled, the Mute button behaves as expected and provides the usual haptic feedback. However, with VoiceOver enabled, the Mute button exhibits unexpected behavior. To experience this yourself, try using the Mute button with VoiceOver disabled and observe the haptic feedback, and then compare it with VoiceOver enabled.

Additionally, I am seeing an issue with the physical volume buttons on my iPhone 14 Pro. When my device is asleep, pressing either of the volume buttons will wake my phone. This means that I get the usual VoiceOver chatter which accompanies the waking of my iPhone, that typically being to announce any notifications on the Lock Screen. All very annoying when you simply want to nudge the volume level whilst listening to something. Like the Mute button issue, this also appears to be a VoiceOver bug, as the iPhone does not wake when changing the volume with VoiceOver off.

It would be great if others could confirm they are experiencing the same so that I can be confident when filing a bug report.

By Januš Kazakevič on Saturday, July 22, 2023 - 00:26

All Eloquence synthesizer English voices, when using voiceover, do not pronounce diacritic Latin symbols 'ą, č, ę, ė, į, š, ų, ū, ž' when reading text by words, lines, or continuously. However, if I change the rotor to characters, the voices read out 'ą, č, ę, ė, į, š, ų, ū, ž' just fine. When reading the text words by words, line by line, and continuously, these characters should be pronounced as 'a, c, e, e, i, s, u, u, z'. this issue as it seems to be a bug in Eloquence synthesizer.

FB12747091

By Peter Holdstock on Saturday, July 22, 2023 - 00:26

Not sure if anybody commented on this while using beta 3 but I repeatedly found that the media audio on my iPhone 14 pro would suddenly reduce. Toggling voice speech on and off cause the audio to go back to the expected volume. However, this problem would re occur at some point after.

This issue still seems to be present.

By Lily Rose on Saturday, July 22, 2023 - 00:26

Oh yikes! That one's a toughie! Wondering how VO can change the behavior of physical buttons...strange.

By Ambro on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

Hi, I just updated to ios 17 beta 4, and choosing the Eloquence voice I can't find the settings for the voice you speak of. I don't know if they exist only in the English version, as I use the iPhone in Italian. Where are? Thank you.

By Dennis Long on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

1 settings accessibility
2 voiceover.
3 speech
4 eloquence
5 go to the voice you want swipe up to per voice settings.

By Ambro on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

A thousand thanks. I hadn't noticed. I played around with the settings a bit and it's nice to be able to tweak them.
The fact remains that the Italian voice of eloquence has ruined it a bit, as I have noticed that it doesn't happen with English. I reported the bug, hopefully they fix it.
But I already had this problem on ios 16.6.
With the beta for now I haven't found any serious bugs, let's say that the one of the mute lever that doesn't work may be the only one, but just disable voiceover, mute it and reactivate it, and you're done.

By Indra on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

Hello, how about the battery performance? Is the battery drained faster?

By Ambro on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

Regarding my experience battery performance is the same in ios 16. i've checked also my battery status, and is the same of ios 16.

By Ash Rein on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

Consider that resetting all settings is actually part of beta testing. Sometimes what might seem like a bug might be a issue caused when the beta software was loaded up. There have been many cases where resetting all settings has actually resolved an issue. I would encourage everyone to recognize that if they are doing beta testing, this must be a regular part of their routine. This is not meant for fun. It is literally meant to go through everything and essentially provide as much information to the engineers as possible. If at any point, you think this is inconvenient, then beta testing is probably not for you.

I have composed this message using dictation. However, I went through it, and made as many spelling and contextual changes as possible. That is also part of the communicative process.

By Enes Deniz on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

But we have certain posters here who ignore all the warnings and continue to post nonsense without ever considering proofreading. By the way, you're right about resetting the settings. And since you said you checked your post for misspellings or grammatical errors, I'll have to inform you that you wouldn't say "a issue", so you probably didn't do it thoroughly enough.

By Bingo Little on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

Enes Deniz, I have to inform you that you ought not to start a sentence with 'and', as you do here. Deploy the semi-colon instead; it will solve that problem. The other thing that bleedin' annoys me (and which is evidenced here) is the failure to appreciate that there is a difference between then and than. The latter is what you need when making a comparison - Bingo is more pompous than me. No, not than I, as it takes the accusative pronoun. Hopefully IOS17 will help everyone discover their Oxford Comma.

By Enes Deniz on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

Okay, I didn't claim my posts were perfect in terms of grammar and spelling, but nor did I claim I would do a thorough check before sending each and every post of mine. I just go through my posts prior to sending them, or if I don't, I have the screen reader read them out after I post them. I don't make use of any tools to check my posts for errors, and I just edit them myself when I deem necessary for any reason. I may happen to type "then" instead of "than" or vice versa, but not really because I don't know what they mean and which one to use where. Besides, starting a sentence with "and" is something I know is considered grammatically wrong but do in Turkish too, without paying much attention unless I'm writing something highly formal. So I don't mind being expected to construct flawless sentences even though I'm not a native speaker of English, but do bear in mind that;
1. One who speaks English as one's mother tongue and claims to have performed a grammar and spelling check when warning someone else to do so, is supposed to make no mistakes at least in the very post in which (s)he makes this claim.
2. I confidently consider all my sentences to be far too sophisticated, with vocabulary and phrases not (commonly) used by most non-natives, so I don't think you have much to say when it's not even fair that it is English that we all have to communicate in. When tourists visit Turkiye and just say "Merhaba!" or "TeĹźekkĂĽrler!", those present often congratulate them and exaggerate a few memorized words as if those tourists speak literary Turkish. So I should at least have the right to speak broken English with sufficiently-coherent sentences still conveying my points well enough, and a heavy accent that still doesn't prevent anyone from getting what I mean. Anyway, let's get back to the topic.

By Levi Gobin on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

There is a new system notifications setting in voiceover verbosity settings, giving you finer control of how voiceover handles notifications.
The Sound curtain setting has been moved to the braille settings and now shows an alert before turning it on.
And as mensioned in another comment, there is now an elloquence comunity dictionary toggle.

By wiljames on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

According to MacRumors, the mute switch will be no more. It will be an action button that has 9 actions.

Accessibility: This option would presumably let users access various accessibility features, such as VoiceOver, Zoom, AssistiveTouch, and more.
Shortcuts: As on the ‌Apple Watch Ultra‌, this option would let users run any shortcut they have created or downloaded from the Shortcuts app, such as sending a message, playing a playlist, or controlling smart home devices.
Silent Mode: Similar to how the switch works on current ‌iPhone‌ models, this option would let users toggle silent mode on or off, which would mute or unmute the ringer and alerts.
Camera: This option would likely let users launch the Camera app and/or take a photo or video with a single press of the Action button.
Flashlight: This option would let users turn on or off the flashlight on the back of the device.
Focus: This option should let users activate or deactivate a Focus mode.
Magnifier: This option would presumably let users activate the Magnifier app to use the ‌iPhone‌'s camera as a magnifying glass to zoom in on small text or objects.
Translate: This option could let users launch the Translate app and start a conversation or text translation with a single press of the Action button.
Voice Memos: This option would let users start or stop recording a voice memo with the Voice Memos app.

I went digging through the settings and could not find anything for the mute switch to change its setting based upon what I read here yesterday regarding the phone not being silenced. Time will tell, I guess.

By Brian Giles on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

That action button rumor, if true, excites me and that, combined with the features that require the lidar sensor, might be enough to make me consider upgrading from my 12 mini.

I doubt Apple will change the regular mute switch's functionality though.

By Enes Deniz on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

I prefer calling the current thing a switch instead of a button. A button you would press, whereas a switch you would toggle on or off. So if you toggle the switch on to take a photo, what will it do when you toggle it off? Or will it totally be replaced by a button that can be pressed, like the side button or the volume buttons?

By Andy Lane on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

The pretty consistant and looks very likely rumours suggest the iPhone 15 series will have a button instead of the mute switch. The actions listed above have been uncovered in a beta and give information about what that new button will probably be able to do unless changed prior to release of iOS 17 which is possible. Personally I’d rather they switched the volume buttons for a haptic slider similar to the AirPods Pro 2 as well. That would give the ability to change tracks without unlocking the phone. I know the AirPods don’t have haptics but there would be much more space in the phone.

By Andy Lane on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

I wasn’t part of the fun earlier with language gate. My opinion on the matter is as long as the sentence can be easily understood then its fine.

By Ash Rein on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

I need this to be focused on iOS 17 beta 4. Primarily focusing on bugs, improvements, etc. the upcoming button on iPhone 15 pro could use its own forum page.

Maintaining focus on iOS 17 beta 4 helps me to learn about new functionality, how some bugs are triggered, and how to actually write my bug reports

By DrummerGuy on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

OK, so, this is the problem that I am encountering:
When opening an Internet page with Safari, and, You need to answer a phone call, by the time you hang up the phone, the page becomes inaccessible.
So far, the only thing that seems to work is to close the page and reopen.
If anybody else is having the same problem, I need to know so I can make a report.

By Cobbler on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

Since updating to beta 4 I've had about 10 occasions when a web Safari page has become completely inaccessible. When this has happened, the status bar and tab bar have remained accessible. It has only been the web page itself which has been inaccessible. Briefly turning VoiceOver off and back on again has not corrected the behaviour. Neither does refreshing the page. However, if I switch to another tab and then return to the previous one, it will be accessible. When doing this switching of tabs, the tab I have switched to has always been accessible.

I've not been able yet to determine any pattern to when this behaviour presents itself, which has made it difficult to formulate a meaningful bug report.

By Nikola Jovic on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

Hello,
indeed, web browsing appears to be extremely broken. At times, you simply cannot locate anything by touching the screen, except the toolbar at the bottom.

There does however appear to be a simple workaround, without switching tabs or restarting anything. If you use the gesture to go to the first item (four finger tap near the top of the screen), your focus should go to the first element of the web page. Note that this does mean you will have to do a lot of swiping as touch exploration on a web page still won't work, but you should be able to access everything. Currently I am not sure what triggers this.

Regarding notifications, indeed, everything can now be customized much more, including how system banners should be spoken as well as notifications on the lock screen.
Sadly, this caused a regression that I really hope will be resolved.

In iOS 16 and earlier, in verbosity settings, there was only one toggle, always speak notifications. If it was set to on, notifications would be spoken both when locked and unlocked, but as a major downside, if a notification arrived while VoiceOver was reading something, that something would be interrupted to speak the incoming notification.
If you had always speak notifications off, this didn't happen and the notification would be read after VoiceOver finishes reading.
Currently, in iOS 17, no matter what verbosity options I configured (I tried speaking notifications only when they are banners, or banners and on the lock screen), VoiceOver now always interrupts reading to speak a notification, which is quite annoying. I will submit feedback about this and I certainly hope it can be addressed.

By Matt on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

Does anyone know what the sound curtain would be used for? I understand it might be useful for braille users, but I can’t for the life of me see why anyone, sighted or otherwise, would want everything on their phone to be entirely muted. If this is a feature that comes out in the final release of iOS 17, I hope apple makes it rather difficult to accidentally turn on. I would hate to accidentally turn this feature on and then forget how to turn it off. I hope this is a feature apple gives careful consideration.

By Dominic on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

Okay, this is concerning and I definitely am reporting this, even though my phone is off mute, after I press the volume up button, after flicking the mute switch from mute to unmute it went back to mute after I pressed the volume up button, now I don’t know how to unmute it, iPhone SE 2022
Will definitely be reporting this
I’ll update this post with my feedback ID after submission
This to me is a very serious bug

By Dominic on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

On for the loading sound is very muffled on Safari

By Dominic on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

Until I found a link, and use either headings or links to activate the website and use it accessibly, this kind of is annoying though, there’s gonna be a few bugs I’m gonna be reporting to Apple, so hopefully in five they will be fixed
Hey, at least they fix the issue where the search text Phill disappeared and messages, at least that’s fixed No, the mute issue is not a voice bug. It is an entire OS bug, I tried with VoiceOver off enemy is still a card
Also, I got the inaccessible website thingy as well, what I did was go to the address bar, swipeuntil I found a link, and use either headings or links to activate the website and use it accessibly, this kind of is annoying though, there’s gonna be a few bugs I’m reporting to Apple, so hopefully in five they will be fixed

By Dominic on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

What’s a Camille dictation just copied my sentence all over again. Is dictation doubling itself in the latest bet
Okay this beat is kinda concerning, yeah I’m reporting these to Apple most certainly
Not to mention basically half of what I said, about the whole muting/William situation, it missed basically half the stuff I said
Dictation is terrible today

By Enes Deniz on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

By the way, how about we all send a suggestion to Apple requesting that a warning should show up upon enabling screen or sound curtain for the first time? Too bad dialogs or alerts on iOS don't allow for anything other than buttons, but I would love to have a check box or switch button that would let us choose whether we wished to have this warning next time.

By Scott Davert on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Without discussing specifics of the beta, I will simply say that I can not think of a reason someone would unintentionally activate this setting. It's buried several menus deep and does require that you confirm you wish it to be enabled. If you choose yes after that warning, well, I guess you should have listened, because now you won't be able to... I can understand a possible concern, but really can't think of a scenario where it would be enabled by accident.

By Justin Harris on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

A few days have passed since Beta 4 dropped, but still no Public Beta 2. It's pretty much the same software, so any idea what is going on there? They usually drop at the same time, at least that's what the norm has been in the past.

By Julian on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

Hopefully it means that Apple is addressing some of the bugs, especially the one where web pages become almost inaccessible, that have been reported with Dev beta 4. Or, maybe just wishful thinking on my part.

By Nikola Jovic on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

Hello,
In beta 4, it is completely impossible to enable this feature by accident. Not only is there a warning now, but also, it now works only when a braille display is connected.

By burak on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

Hello,
One use case that would make sence is for deaf blind people who don't wish anyone around to hear their phone, just what like we blind people do with screen curtain.

By Andy Lane on Tuesday, August 22, 2023 - 00:26

Screen curtain is when your eyes don’t work so no use for screen. Sound curtain is for when your ears don’t work and have no use for a speaker. Thats what I thought anyway. When you can’t hear or see your phone you can’t control it making sound you don’t want others to hear or images you might not want others to be able to see. Not that you don’t want them to see but that you can’t control who sees what. Same with sound curtain for sound if you’re deaf.