Occasional soft crackling when VoiceOver speaks on iPhone 17 with internal speaker

By Mlth, 21 March, 2026

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hi

I just switched from an iPhone 13 Pro to a new iPhone 17, and am noticing an occasional, very soft crackling from the internal speaker when VoiceOver speaks, especially when starting a new sequence of speaking, and not noticeably when speaking continuously (e.g. after performing a "read all" command). It happens regardless of what voice I use, be it Samantha (enhanced), Eloquence or a third party synthesizer like eSpeak.

This doesn't seem to occur when playing other sound through the speaker, so I'm inclined to believe it may be a software issue with the way VoiceOver audio is being processed on my iPhone 17.

I tried messing with various audio and VoiceOver settings to no effect. I usually turn all VoiceOver sounds off and just use haptics, but with VoiceOver sounds on this still occurs.

Has anyone experienced something similar and if so, found a fix?

Best
M

Options