Problems with Messages app in iOS 14.1

By peter, 25 October, 2020

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

I am wondering if others have experienced problems with the messages app in iOS 14.1. For me the Messages app seems to be working in a very flakey manner with Voiceover. Here are some of the issues I've seen using iOS 14.1 on my iPhone XR:

- Sometimes Voiceover does not speak at all in the Messages app. When this happens I have to close the Messages app and re-open it again.

- Sometimes when opening the Messages app focus will suddenly be placed at a message in the list of mesges that is several down from the top. When this happens I can't even flick up to the earlier messages. The only way I can get to the prior messages in the list is to use a three inger swipe down.

- When replying to a message I can flick to the place where I usually see the text area to edit a message. However, nothing happens when I try to activate this area. If I flick right once more I come to something that says "button down arrow".

In fact I tried to reply to a message from a group message stream and couldn't this afternoon.

I'm surprised I haven't seen anything on this in the forums. Can I be the only one experiencing this strange behavior? This is totally unworkable for me.

Thanks for any feedback.

--Pete

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Comments

By Jellibubi on Sunday, October 25, 2020 - 19:42

hi,
i use messages a lot and it works well.
despite the fact that i also have ios 14 issues that some people dont seem to have, in your case it sounds like the new "screen recognition" feature in ios is on.
it can be turned on and off via the rotar - if so configured. it's on on an app by app basis.
i have screen recognition option on in my rotar, and sometimes i turn it on by mistake in an app and have similar experiences.

thomas

Dennis,

I don't understand your reply about this not being an Apple issue. If screen recognition is a feature then it should work with Voiceover turned on. When I have screen recognition turned on at times Voiceover will go completely silent, other times it is impossible to activate the edit field, etc as noted in my first post. I don't think an app should stop working just because screen recognition is turned on. In fact I think the point of screen recognition is to help apps work better that were not properly coded with correct lables for buttons and other elements. Is that not right?

--Pete