Voiceover Crashing on iOS 16.4

There seems to be a whole discussion about this within the IOS 16.4 blog post, yes I can assure you many others are experienceing this.

yep yep. I had this issue too. really borken update.

I actually put a topic up about that bug all the way back when iOS16.0 came out last fall. The only way you're going to fix that continuous self toggling of voiceover is to free up space on your phone, or switch exclusively to Eloquence or a compact voice and ignore the fact that enhanced and premium voices even exist, as Apple is in absolutely no hurry to fix the bug. I've literally been battling with them over this since September of last year, and it's effected two different phones, one an 8, the other a 12 Mini. They know the bug exists, regardless of how they at first blamed operator error or device problems when I first reported said bug. They're fully aware of the bug, but at bottom, they don't care, as it's only a blind accessibility bug. The only reason my phone's currently not doing it is that I got rid of most of the audio content I had on it, whether that content be audio books, audios in voice dream reader, or music. Other than doing something similar with your phone to reduce disc space taken up by various content, it's going to continue to happen. If they wanted it fixed, they'd have had it fixed by now, as my first call to apple accessibility to report the problem was a week after 16.0 came out in September of last year, and it's now six months later, and the bug still exists several updates down the line.

I reported a similar behaviour, when the first 16.4 beta was released. in my case, only appeared when using the eloquence voice,, other voices worked as expected.
I know, someone said switching to eloquence solves it, in my case it was the problem, not the sollution :)
https://www.applevis.com/forum/apple-beta-releases/eloquence-probably-broken-first-ios-164-beta

This issue is not being ignored. It is being addressed. And those who are messing with the beta version of iOS beyond 16.4 might be able to attest to that

I didn hav that issue.
try restore from the mac or pc.
I did that, before updating to ios 16.4.

This is extremely annoying. I have my work emails piped into my personal iPhone but that's on condition that I keep IOS up-to-date. I can't hang around on 16.3.1 too much longer, and yet this seems a bit of a showstopper. anyone know if it happens with the UK siri voices?

Hi,
I’m using an iPhone 13 promax, running iOS 16.4. I’ve seen this issue numerous times, including before 16.4, as well as after. I heard last night, that it’s even worse in the 16.5 beta.
Can anyone who might be testing that confirm?

Hi Guys, this came up as part of 16.4 beta testing and I had issues until the final RC release. Now works. But I found it is the vocaliser voices that are the issue. So Alex should work. Oddly I had the reboot and sluggish behaviour and I thought they were interlinked. So, maybe it was two issues. But Alex apart from some very odd speaking words like appstore as appsore should solve this.

Subject line says it all. I know there are some Brits who are happy to change to Alex to obviate this nonsense. That's fine; but I want to continue using an English voice. I don't use the Vocalizer voices myself as I think they're somewhat inferior, hence my question about other options - UK Siri, for example? In any event, wasn't someone saying elsewhere that this happens with Eloquence too?

I'm using Eloquence and just had this happen while typing a few minutes ago. The only difference was that speech didn't come back on by itself; I had to turn VO off, then back on.

Now that i've used ios 16 a bit longer, about once or twice, when typing in the messages app, voiceover will spontaneously just... stop talking out of the blue. Like, i'm about too switch to brille screen input, and I think I tapped on a letter ,and voiceover just froze. I was wearing my airpods at the time which is the only time thus far i've experienced this, so far at least, but voiceover resumed speaking about after 3, 5 seconds. This hasn't been happening often but it is concerning to sy the least. Also as far as reporting it to apple accessibility about this, what is the best way to do so? I mean, this bug doesn't happen freequently, and its not really possible to give a set of steps to cause it to trigger as with other bugs. Is that what people here have experienced?

Hi,
Yeah, when it happens, is completely random. It’s not like I can do anything to cause it. I’ve seen it happen if I open a link from Twitter, and start reading the associated article, or even with mastodon. I’ve even seen it happen a couple times in Mail and/or messages. Someone said that VoiceOver might just be crashing. I’m not really sure what’s going on. I just wish it would get fixed. Someone said that it even happens on the iPhone 14.

As I previously stated, if the issue isn't being ignored, why is it that it has now existed since September of last year, nearly seven months, through several updates, from 16.0 on up to 16.4? People have been reporting and reporting and reporting, and nothing's being done. as for switching voices to fix the problem, why should we have to switch from a voice we like to stop a bug from cropping up that should have been fixed over half a year ago? Apple has been aware of the bug since the first iOS16 came out. they've been given reports through their accessibility team. they've been sent screen recordings and so forth, and still the bug exists. I'm reminded very strongly of a tweet someone posted last year, containing a hypothetical pair of conversations between Apple Support and a blind user, as opposed to one between them and a sighted user.
Blind User:
Voiceover isn't working properly.
Apple:
We'll look into it.
Sighted User:
I can't load my photos properly.
Apple:
We'll have it fixed next week.

I experience the VoiceOver crashing issue especially with Eloquence Eddy and Read. Siri US voice 4 reacts slower, but Siri Australian female works fine as well as Tessa compact voice. For many months I turned off the navigation sounds and turned on haptics on my iPhone 13Pro. Yesterday I reversed this order. Sounds on and haptics off. Well Eloquence works as it should and US Siri voice 4 speaks faster again.

I’ve been having this issue mainly since iOS 16.4 betas. The issue with eloquence is a different issue entirely. What would happen with eloquence is, when you would due a two finger single tap near the end of the speech, (say eloquence said the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog and you did the gesture after the word lazy) the speech would not come back if you did the two finger single tap again. That’s what I figured out the issue is in iOS 16.4 beta’s. I made a voice memo sent it to Apple, it was fixed next beta. I’m happy. Right? No, it’s back in 16.5, except it doesn’t crash whenever I do the gesture performed above, it’ll crashes randomly, just like in 16.4 beta 1.
As far as Siri voices crashing, I do not use vocalize voices because I feel like they’re low quality in iOS 16. I am using Alex, but I’m kind of bored of Alex by this point, and I really wish I could use eloquence. It was fixed in 16.4 and now it’s back again.
I’m glad to see many people have reported this, because I’ve had an issue ever since before September, iOS 16.0 developer beta four, which from websites say it was released in July. This is where the navigational sounds don’t play in stereo when you navigate when you’re connected to external accessories, and this is still happening in 16.5. Yep I’m still having this issue in 16.5. at this point, Apple is either going to fix it or they’re not. I am hoping for iOS 17 to fix this issue, but if not, there’s going to be some problems. it’s just something I live with.
I’m ready for a change, Apple, start fixing your stuff!

P.S,
I had this crazy dream last night. I had a dream that I went to Apple and told them about the bugs, and they said they would fix it and I told them I liked iOS 15 better and they somehow downgraded my iPhone 14 Pro to iOS 15. I don’t know what this says about anything, but I thought I would share this quite funny dream.
P.p.S, don’t think Alex is off the hook. As I was writing this, Alex crashed and required a VR restart. Just putting it out there. I have not really used Espeak, but I would try that even though it’s not the best speech synthesizer in the world. at least it’s something that hopefully doesn’t crash.

Hello i have 16.4 se3 and voice over has different voice after reboot then pressing passcode the alec voice comes back, also i have noticed suddenly i hear 'screen curtain on' for as far i know it was on all this time and it does this more then once or twice , greets mak .. i hope not to have voice over crash sure like this fixed

Hi everyone,

I have some good news! After updating to iOS 16.4.1, it seems that the issue with VoiceOver crashing and restarting has been resolved. So far, I haven't experienced any crashes or restarts.

As above I just wanted to add another in case anyone was wondering if it would fix VO crashing for them. It’s early days but so far no crashes. Now for the rest of the bugs… Thanks Apple for at least sorting this one relatively quickly, can you please keep up the pace on the other bugs that make using my phone and iPad a pretty miserable experience.

Using US Siri voice and it’s still crashing quite often. The only way to fix it on my side it’s to use a smaller size voice. iPhone 11 pro 64Gig

I recently updated to IOS 16.4 and voiceover started acting very poorly. It was not following the text blocks in text message inbox and it was lumping multiple text messages together. It also wouldn't let me land on the text box to actually send a text message. In other words, it was a disaster for me. After digging into it a bit, I noticed that "Voice Recognition" was now listed in my rotor menu, but I don't recall having added it myself. Once I turned Voice Recognition off, voiceover began to function properly again. Just wanted to share this experience in case others are having similar issues.

Hello,
I’m currently using the Ava voice & I can’t remember exactly what I was doing, but voiceover crashed.
To fix it, I had to turn VO off & back on using the side button.
I’m running ios16.4.1.

iOS 16.4.1 here as well and VoiceOver is crashing a lot.
Here the other day VO even crashed while my iPhone XR was locked and put away in my pocket.
Suddenly I could hear VoiceOver On, screen curtain On.
VO is also crashing while using my iPhone in different apps.
I can't find any pattern - VO just suddenly crash and it happens darn often.

I think I said elsewhere that updating to 16.4.1 fixed the issue, and then revised my opinion to say that though it still crashed, it was less of a problem than previously. I wish I had said neither. it's still the same. I'm not changing to Alex. I want English English. UK Siri female is the best voice available for this dialect. It's a very annoying quirk this - it happened to me the other day when reading a Kindle book. confounded nuisance!

I was using American Siri 4, and it was practically unusable. I have switched to a UK Siri voice, and it's only crashing a few times a day. I will reluctantly try Alex.

this bug sounds very strange. and also hard to pin down. i’m running iOS 16.5 developer beta and will report if it happens to me.

So it's crashing less often with Alex, but I've had a couple. And I"m not a big Alex fan. But at least I can use the phone.

It happens 3 or 4 times a day. I can be typing, playing a game, just scrolling through the apps in a folder. If I turn VO off, wait about 10 seconds, and turn it back on, it works until the next time.

I would suggest that people wait until iOS 16.5 they might be pleasantly surprised.

I'm still deleting 16.4.1, or what ever the update is, each time it downloads itself on my phone. But I'm going to delete 16.5 too, until everyone here agrees the crashing is fixed.

Hi to OldBear

Just want you to know, that you can stop the updates from automatically downloading now.

Go to settings, general, software updates, automatic updates and turn both options off. Would recommend leaving the security option left on though.

Hate the thought of all that extra data / Bandwidth being used up for you. If your on unlimited wi-fi / data it doesn't really matter but still, a better use for a GB or two for something else. Rather than a Reoccurring update you specifically don’t want.

HTH

Thanks for describing where exactly it is. I might turn that off. There is something satisfying about deleting the update though...

iPhone SE 2020 to 128 GB
Had to update to set up Apple Watch series 8
Probably the worst issue I’ve ever seen since iOS 13

You are not the only one. When updating to this version of iOS 16, I experienced those two. However, I don’t know why, but I don’t experience it anymore. I was going to write a ticket to the Feedback app and see if they can solve it by the next update. Honestly, I will just give it time. I know it’s annoying because it did bother me. Hopefully it will resolve itself as it did with me.

From my experience, voice over seens to lag a bit when I'm navigating on the interface.

Im disappointed at ios -16.41

I know someone said Apple was working on this issue, but it's only gotten worse. I have an iPhone 8pluss, or whatever, and I know it's older hardware and that probably makes the issue worse for me, but everyone up to the latest model seem to be experiencing this problem to some degree. And 16.4.1 seems to be the upgrade from hell for a lot of blind users.

I was not having this problem on 16.4, but ass soon as I updated to 16.4.1 it started crashing for me literally every 10 to 30 seconds. I couldn't read anything of length because ass soon as I tried it would crash 1 or 2 paragraphs in. Every app had this issue from Amazon to Itunes.

After reading all the posts I could find on this crash bug, I switched to Alex and it seems to have gotten better--fingers crossed. I can't stand this voice. I know some people have a nostalgic attachment to such low quality voices, but I can't stand them. I feel like I'm using a computer from the DOS days, and some things just belong in the past.

It wouldn't upset me as much if Apple was more transparent about these problems. If they just dropped into threads like this and told us how they planned to deal with the issue going forward, I'd be more understanding. But, as another poster pointed out, they just seem to ignore our pleas for some demonstration that they have a plan and time frame for fixing this, and other, VoiceOver issues. Maybe we are a smaller customer base and aren't that important to their bottom line, but we are still customers and deserve better.

I don't like Google much, but Android is an option. If Apple continues to betray my patronage by seemingly ignoring the problems me and other blind users raise about their products falling behind in accessibility then I might have no other principled option but to spend my money elsewhere.

This isn't an isolated issue with some people. This is a blatant, in-your-face problem that I don't know how anyone could ignore. There's no way this wasn't noticed before release, and yet it was released with no warning that we might experience problems. That is inexcusable in my book, and it's not the first time it's happened either.

It's not like you can just ignore updates. They all contain security patches that are necessary. It would be nice if you could just download a patch for the security issues without all the other bells and whistles that go along with a full update, but that's not an option. The least Apple could do is warn us that there are possible UI breaking issues for people who use VO before we update so we could make an informed decision.

Heck, every Apple product comes with an agreement that we have to approve before we can use it. I think it's only fair if we get some consideration in return by addressing all the potential issues.

Here's what they want me to do. For those having a lot of trouble with this bug, I suggest you follow these steps, too. Good luck. Bruce:

Apple's response: With the release of iOS 16.4 work was done to address the focus of VoiceOver in the News app. If you are still having issues and able to reproduce the behavior, we'd like to investigate further. To aid our investigation, we’d like to receive a screen recording and log file from your device that is generated after the behavior is reproduced again. Here’s our documentation for recording your screen and gathering the requested logs:

Record the screen on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
https://support.apple.com/HT207935

Log capture process:
1. Reproduce the issue, and make a note of the exact hour and minute.
2. Launch this link using Safari, on the device used to reproduce the behavior or the companion iPhone: diags://426795534
3. Open the diagnostic app from the pop up that occurs and then follow the on-screen prompts for terms of service and initiation of log collection.
4. While the device is the collecting the logs, you can continue using your device as your normally would. Uploading will continue in the background when connected to Wi-Fi.

We will receive an email that your logs have successfully uploaded, but would appreciate a follow up that contains the time stamp of when you reproduced the behavior. Once we have this information, we can investigate further. We appreciate bringing this to our attention.