Teaching An Old Dog New Tricks, Changing Voiceover's default Messages

By Gar, 31 October, 2019

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

So... I recently ran into a problem that I had somehow created, without realizing it. For more on that, see here:
https://www.applevis.com/forum/voiceovers-english-us-voices-are-rebelling-please-help
But after I fixed voiceover, I decided to experiment a little and, on a hunch, I was actually able to rewrite the messages that voiceover announces when you turn voiceover itself, screen curtain, or speech on/off.
This might work with other messages, I don't know yet, but for now, here's how you do it.
Open the settings app.
Navigate to accessibility>voiceover>speech>pronunciations
Click add.
Type in the phrase you want to change, ie "Voiceover on", but do not include any punctuation. Also, ensure the V is capitalized.
Then toggle the ignore Case option to on.
Then, you can go to the substitution textfield and enter in anything you want voiceover to say in place of, voiceover on, such as voiceover has been enabled.
I'm curious to hear what other uses you guys come up with for this.
Enjoy!

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Comments

By Brian Tew on Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - 13:47

I have found over the years that changing default values is usually a bad idea
unless there is a compelling reason. It makes diagnosing problems more difficult.

By Gar on Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - 13:47

Perhaps. But in this case you're not changing them, so much as you are overriding them. And you can always delete the entries. I did that and my voiceover messages went back to what they were before.

By tunmi13 on Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - 13:47

This could work, but keep in mind if you see the same message written somewhere else, you'll get this.
Original: I turned VoiceOver Off.
Changed: I turn 'VoiceOver disabled'.

By Gar on Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - 13:47

Not necessarily. As I wrote above, you will want to turn the ignore case option to on, while ensuring the first letter of the phrase you want to change is capitalized. That will make things much less likely to break.