iOS 11 - Quirky behavior in mail app

By peter, 21 September, 2017

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

I have noticed some quirky behavior in the mail app when using VO since updating to iOS 11 and wonder if others have experienced this.

Generally if I flick up on a mail item in the list of mail messages, the first action item is "delete". Then if I do a single finger double tap, the message is deleted.

Since updating to iOS 11, however, I sometimes see that the first action item I see after flicking up once is "More". Thus it seems as if the action items list is not always starting at the default position.

That isn't a big problem in the example above (although it is a bit of a nuisance), but I also put my finger on one of the messages in the list this morning to bring focus there, then did a single finger double tap and the meemessage was deleted rather than opening. This indicated to me that the action item had been on "delete" rather than "open" which should be the default action.

As I indicated, I had never observed this behavior in iOS 10 and this suddenly started occuring with iOS 11. so I would just like to confirm if others are experiencing this quirky behavior also before I file a bug with Apple.

Thanks.

--Pete

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Comments

By Chanelle on Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - 23:40

Hello,On Tuesday, AppleVis released a blog post about iOS 11 bugs. There is a section about quirks or weird behavior that are not actually problems with iOS 11. I tested the beta a couple of weeks before the official release of iOS 11 and experienced the same frustration with mail—swiping up on a message would not always bring me to the delete action and double tapping would send messages to the trash. Apparently, VoiceOver now remembers the last action performed, so the rotor is left on that option. Someone did post a blog by Jonathan Mosen indicating that the mail quirk is a bug, but the link was not available when I looked and attempted to research it through mosen.org. Now, I need to be extremely careful when going through mail unless I want to go digging through the trash for accidentally thrown away messages. :)Hope this helps.Chanelle

By DPinWI on Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - 23:40

Yes. It seems the flick action is somewhat sticky, and instead of starting from a known default position, it usually starts from the last option used. This doesn't seem consistent, but it's still early and it may not be as unpredictable as it seems.

Either way, I'm not a big fan of it right now, a it seems an unnecessary complication to an established workflow.

I have also found myself lost in an email I didn't know I had opened, or in a blank version of an email I attempted to delete.

It truly may be that I need to adapt to a new system, or, it's downright quirky.

By peter on Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - 23:40

Yes, I think users expect reproducible and consistent results when performing an action. The current behavior is more prone to errors.

--Pete