I’ve been having pretty much the worst time with Voiceover since iOS 15 and these days my phone is barely usable thanks to focus never, ever where it says it is, long loading times when switching apps, and Safari freezing my entire phone until a page loads (and sometimes crashing the phone, that’s a recent bit of fun). I have adjusted and disabled some VO settings but they seem to still be active no matter what the toggles say.
Someone brought up that it sounds like I have two versions of VO running. Is that even possible? Can it be stopped?
(This is an up to date iPhone 14 Pro Max but these issues have carried over to multiple phone models. Yes I’ve factory reset the phone twice, reset all settings, replaced my eSim, and spent two weeks showing this disaster to Apple Accessibility. So far the problems persist and worsen with every update and no solution has been found.)
Comments
Questions
Hi there,
I have questions.
1. iOS 15? Umm, why?
2. Are you/have you been running any beta software (including beta iOS)?
3. You said this phone's settings were ported over; did this double VO thing happen immediately? Or after a recent app download and/or update?
Looking forward to your responses. 🙂
Questions answered
1. I’m running iPS 17.5.1 just to clarify. I’ve been having focus issues and an increasingly bad time since iOS 15. This is a years' long ongoing set of problems that have been stacking on top of each other until I can't even reliably open a link in a new tab without double checking where the cursor is first.
2. No beta running, although I have noticed I always seem to have problems that show up in beta. No idea what's going on there.
3. I don't actually know if it is a case of double Voiceover or not, that's just the next guess I have about the real problem. These issues happen whether I port my settings over or not. I wiped my phone completely, twice, and the focus bug was there on startup.
Just from reading another…
Just from reading another post on here, I'm wondering if there are more physical issues with this focus bug. I do get it, but not nearly as often as others. I'm wondering if screen protectors/cases may have a hand in this? There are also environmental factors, high humidity comes to mind. Finally, there may be issues with ghost touches or even accidental touches. We use our phones in a unique way compared with our sighted counterparts.
There must be some differentail here that is different with your device, environment or how you choose to use your device, that is causing these issues. That's not an accusation. For example, are you a swiper or a toucher or a combination of both? Do you have large or small hands? I ask as with smaller hands on a larger screen we're more likely to swipe in slight arcs rather than a straight line....
Still, none of this should matter. IOS should be smart enough to correct.
Also, regarding running two instances of voiceover, as far as I know, it's impossible to run two instances of anything on the iPhone, and I'd assume voiceover would be included.
First suggestion
Ok, I have a lot I want to have you try:
1. Go to Settings > Accessibility. Tap on Spoken Content.
2. Disable absolutely everything that has an "on/off" switch. Ignore Voices, Rate, and Pronunciations.
Do not reboot your iPhone just yet.
Next, back out to Accessibility (from Spoken Content, then:
1. Scroll down to Voice Control, and disable it if enabled.
2. Scroll down further, then disable Sound Recognition if enabled.
3. Scroll down to Live Caption, disable if needed.
4. Scroll down a bit more and disable Live Speech.
Next, go to Settings > General. Tap on Transfer or Reset iPhone, then Reset. What you want to do here is reset your settings, but only your settings.
Power off your device. Do, not, reboot. Do a full power off, then power it back on.
I realize you have already performed resets before, but if we want to fix this, it will likely take an additional reset or 2.
Let me know how things go.
Can you go to an apple shop/store?
Perhaps you could show the person there and they could help you?
Did you say this was happening on multiple IPhones?
Thanks everyone
Thanks for the tips on things to try! I will be doing that today or tomorrow.
If Apple Accessibility can't figure this out, nor their team of engineers, I promise you that even if there was an Apple Store within 50 miles of me (and there is not) they would have no idea what to do here. And yeah, these issues have been happening on every phone I've had since iOS 15; started in an XR, carried over to a 13 Pro Max, made the SE I had for two days completely unusable, and are on their way to bricking my 14 Pro Max.
My next suggestion...
My next suggestion, providing the above do not work, will be to do a factory reset and setup the device as new.
I am sure you transferred settings/apps/etc with every new device, but the issue is you are transferring this bug too.
So the only thing left to try would be reset and set up as new.
Is it time consuming? Absolutely.
Will that do the trick? Probably.
Will you hate life during this? Definitely.
Factory reset
I have done a factory reset without transfering settings and the problem was there as soon as the phone started. I did it twice even. I am absolutely not doing that again for nothing haha.
Reset with update?
I know it is a pain, but perhaps a full reset + setup as new once iOS 18 releases? Even better, do not do anything over the air, but rather use a Mac (if you can access one) or iTunes for Windows.
These are just suggestions, you are of course not obligated to do anything. 😉
Welp
I got so frustrated after resetting the settings did absolutely nothing that I did reset the phone to factory default (for the third time ugh). It didn't change much but since I dashed out to go get the eSIM re-installed I didn't get to put quite everything back and while I'm still having a lot of focus bugs, I have discovered that at least my phone works so much better with Face ID turned off. Go figure!
I suspect whatever is the problem, it's a couple of things on the Apple side that are interfering with each other and making a mess. I have no idea what the real focus issue is caused by but it may have nothing to do with accessibility settings at all. It's at least a little better with no Face ID and I can live with my phone being faster and the focus jumps being slower as a result.
But...
Is VO still acting like two instances of it are running simultaneously?
This focus jump thing is odd.
You mentioned that those in an apple shop wouldn't be able to help you,, I disagree, I think they would if you were able to show them the focus issues.
The thing that's confusing me is that this is happening on more than one IPhone.
Hmm, is screen recognision turned on, if so; turn it off, if it's off then I honestly don't know what to suggest.
Is your phone greasy at all? Try cleaning the screan with a whipe and completely clean and dry your hands and the phone.
Just to recap, when you flick left or right you're saying that Voiceover will randomly jump you to the bottom of the screen or something?
This might not be helpful at all, I don't know, but would you be able to show us by recording it?
Another idea would be going to a basic phone/computer shopp place and seeing if you can get the screen replaced, it would cost a bit but might help, that should be the last thing you try though as this doesn't seam to be a screen issue.
Focus bug
What's happening with all my phones, no matter how new or clean they are, is that the Voiceover cursor goes to the top of things without telling me so. Open a webpage in a new tab, cursor leaps to top of current tab. Click link and bring up the options menu, cursor says it's on "open in new tab" but has actually jumped to the top of the menu and will just open in the current tab. Bring up the app switcher and go to a new app, but it says it's still on the first app. Close an app, but if you think you can close the one right after it too nope, the cursor has reset to "activate" but didn't say so. Tap an item in my to-do list app, get ready to go to next item, but nope, the cursor is now somewhere random within the app. It's like this everywhere and with everything. Sometimes I wonder if I'm too fast for VO or it's the intersection of me being able to see it happening while also hearing the problem, but I also remember a time (just a few months ago) when it wasn't as awful and a few years ago where none of this was a problem at all.
And no, I don't think some kid who was hired to work at the Apple Store I can't get to anyway is going to be any better with Voiceover problems than the people who make Voiceover and have a direct line to the engineering team. Every time I go to the Apple Store I've had to turn VO off for them to work with at all, but it's still a moot point; there is not one anywhere remotely close to me.