iPhone 12: IOS 18.1.1 | Notifications read on locked screen | Is this a new bug?

By Mister Kayne, 25 November, 2024

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

This has happened before, I had to do without having notifications shown on the locked screen. It is happening again. Settings/ accessibility/ VoiceOver/ Verbosity Do nothing is selected for Notifications when screen is locked but does it work? No, all notifications set to show on locked screen are read aloud by VO even in silent mode. I had some very embarrassing situations at work. Can someone validate this? I had to reset all settings the day before this started happening thanks to the lag in response after updating to IOS 18.1.1

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Comments

By Michael Hansen on Wednesday, November 27, 2024 - 13:56

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

I have experienced this before. I have VoiceOver set to speak the count of notifications on the Lock Screen; but the first time I set this up after getting a new device, the settings do not appear to take for some reason. What I have done is change the settings to something else (say, speak nothing or read all notifications), exit out of Settings, then go back in and change the setting back to what I want it to be.

By Holger Fiallo on Wednesday, November 27, 2024 - 13:56

Also I always do a restart after updating the iOS. Even so the phone does it. It helps.

By Holger Fiallo on Wednesday, November 27, 2024 - 13:56

Last week Apple release a security and bugs for it. Not sure which iOS 17 was but check it out. I know 12 pro still support iOS 18.

By Mister Kayne on Wednesday, November 27, 2024 - 13:56

I tried some of the suggestions, like setting the way notifications are handled by VO and restarting. I am yet to check if the suggestions worked, unfortunately whenever I get a text, I am either on a call or doing something on the phone. Thank you all will report if the fix worked later today. P.S. I am on IST, so sorry for the late reply

By Mister Kayne on Wednesday, November 27, 2024 - 13:56

Notifications still reading on locked screen, going to escalate this to apple accessibility. Have a good one!

By Brian on Wednesday, November 27, 2024 - 13:56

This is just a thought here, but under settings, Siri, check to see if you have at some point enabled notifications. Those will read aloud on your lock screen, regardless of what you have VoiceOver notifications set to. Since this is a Siri feature and not a VoiceOver feature.
Just a heads up.

By Michael Hansen on Wednesday, November 27, 2024 - 13:56

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Hi Mr. Kayne,

In my response yesterday I realize I might not have been as detailed as I could have been.

Whenever I get a new iOS device, I always set it up as new and do not restore from a backup. I have seen this issue a few times in the last couple years. When I have encountered this issue, I have had to toggle the settings around a bit to get the setting I wanted to stick.

I would go to Settings> Accessibility> VoiceOver> Verbosity> System Notifications. Under the "When Locked" heading, when all is said and done, you want VoiceOver to be set to "Speak Count." This will speak the count of notifications on your Lock Screen when the device screen wakes.

The problem is that, in my experience, this setting doesn't stick the first time you try it. So what I have had to do is set that setting to something else (either 'Speak' or 'Nothing'), exit the Settings app, come back in, and change it to the "Speak Count" setting. I don't know why this works, but in my experience, this has solved it for me.

By Mister Kayne on Wednesday, November 27, 2024 - 13:56

Brian, under Siri, there is no such settings but I found Siri settings under accessibility General heading and there speak notifications is Off. This is not Siri that is speaking the notifications on the locked screen. Siri voice is Samantha and my Siri voice is American Voice 3, that cool dude from California.

Michael I understood what you said, however thank you for detailing it again. I have now set notifications to show as count. The challenge is that I am on a Focus for work, where only SMS alerts are allowed to come through. Since SMS alerts are set to show on locked screen, VO is reading the messages and waking my screen. Waiting for IOS 18.2 may be this will fix itself, for now I have kept it as count. So far so good I mean no SMS messages received yet ROFL!

By Mister Kayne on Wednesday, November 27, 2024 - 13:56

I am not sure why this was not happening earlier, but as of now the notifications are not read by VO on the locked screen I just get the notification chime. Below are my phone settings and I did not do anything extra to have it work. I always restart my phone after closing all applications in the morning after my phone has reached a 90% charge

Settings/ accessibility/ VoiceOver/ Verbosity/ System Notifications: Do nothing
Settings/ accessibility/ Genral/ Siri: ā€œannounce notificationsā€ setting is turned off

Settings/ Notifications
Under Display As: List
Show Previews: Always.

So now if I want to check the notification on my locked screen, I need to wake it up and the notifications appear as a list on the locked screen.
I am not sure if this will help anyone else but I thought it is best to share on my post. I think this was a temporary glitch
By the way how do you separate paragraphs in your comments I mean give a line break between 2 paras?

By Brian on Wednesday, December 4, 2024 - 13:56

To do line break.

By Mister Kayne on Wednesday, December 4, 2024 - 13:56

Here I am going to give you 2 paragraphs by hitting the return key as you recommended.

This is the second paragraph, I hit return and hopefully it has added a line break or a blank line between the 2 paragraphs. Have a good one!

By Brian on Wednesday, December 4, 2024 - 13:56

There is a line break after the first period (or full stop), and before the word "This".

Just remember, if you want to have actual blank lines between paragraphs, press enter twice.

Like this.

... and this.

These show up much better with the keyboard, than with a touchscreen unfortunately. šŸ˜