VoiceOver randomly talks while phone is locked

By PaulMartz, 11 January, 2024

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

I have an iPhone SE 2020.

Since upgrading to 17.2.1, I've noticed that VoiceOver speaks random words while the phone is locked. This is not a notification; there are no new notifications.

The first few times, it happened while my phone was in my hoodie pocket, so I had to wonder whether I was hearing it or hallucinating. But it has happened twice in the past couple of days, once while the phone was on my desk, and again while I was listening to an audiobook with wired earbuds.

I missed the first part of what it said, but the second part was, "one of seven."

Is anyone else seeing this? Is it a bug or hallucination? I couldn't find a topic for this, or anything in the bug tracker. Thanks for any information.

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Comments

By OldBear on Tuesday, January 9, 2024 - 01:03

I have an SE 2022. It randomly wakes on its own. I don't think it says anything, but it also doesn't seem to go back to sleep. Just kind of sits there on the lock screen until I put it back to sleep.
It's not triggered by Hey SIRI or tapping to wake or anything I'm doing.

By PaulMartz on Tuesday, January 9, 2024 - 01:03

One difference is that my phone isn't waking. It's locked and asleep, and aside from the one time this happened while reading an audiobook, the phone was not in use at all. If my phone were human, I'd swear it was talking in its sleep.

By Brad on Tuesday, January 9, 2024 - 01:03

I don't know, i'm just throwing ideas out there.

You might want to phone apple about it but I don't know if there's anything they can do but it's probably worth trying.

By OldBear on Tuesday, January 9, 2024 - 01:03

That's very weird, if it's not waking when speaking. I think Blind Square says stuff without waking, though. Maybe close all your apps, in case something is running in the background.

By Brian on Tuesday, January 9, 2024 - 01:03

Speaking from the perspective of my old SE2. . .

1. Do you have Siri setup to read any notifications? Any at all? Are you sure? Check this, very important.
2. In Settings > Notifications, how do you have Notifications displayed? Stack? List? Do you use the 'Summary' feature?
3. Do you have Voice Control enabled? Don't laugh, it is a valid question.
4. Any apps/games that give their own periodic updates spoken aloud? one example off the top of my head would be Godville. Which is a strange, but blind accessible, game that gives its own notifications based on in-game events.
5. Any of the newer accessibility features enabled by mistake? Sound recognition and Live Caption come to mind.

HTH. 🤷🏼‍♂️

By PaulMartz on Tuesday, January 9, 2024 - 01:03

It might be related to receiving a notification and clearing the notification from the lock screen. Then the random talking happens some time later. I'm going to attempt to reproduce this soon.

It's not a talking app that I've left running in the background. I'm OCD about closing apps from the app switcher.

SIRI doesn't read incoming notifications. What I'm hearing is VoiceOver, not SIRI. Note that there is no new notification to read.

Interesting that you mentioned voice control. Shortly after upgrading to iOS 17.2.1, I tried voice control briefly simply to learn what it is about. I didn't find it particularly useful and turned it off. But, if simply trying voice control then disabling it were causing this problem, I'd expect someone would have experienced the same behavior. And besides, as I noted, this is definitely VoiceOver talking. Voice control uses the SIRI voice, or at least it did when I tried it. For these reasons, I don't think voice control is involved.

By Bruce Harrell on Tuesday, January 9, 2024 - 01:03

There is a VoiceOver verbosity setting (whose name escapes me) that triggers VoiceOver to speak when the screen changes. Since your phone announced "one of seven", I suspect that list changed, prompting speech.

By Brian on Tuesday, January 9, 2024 - 01:03

Since you have an iPhone with a Ring switch, try setting the "Use Ring Switch" setting to (On). This is under Settings > Accessibility > VO > Verbosity > System Notifications, all the way at the end.

Might help. . . 🤷🏼‍♂️

By PaulMartz on Tuesday, January 9, 2024 - 01:03

I'd love to have a reproducer case before I start tinkering with settings.

I received a couple of notifications last evening and cleared them. The next several hours passed quietly, with no random musing from VoiceOver.

It's frustrating. As we used to say back when I was a programmer, "problems that go away by themselves come back by themselves."

By Jurgen on Tuesday, January 16, 2024 - 01:03

I experienced this on several different iPhone modells and iOS versions. But it's very specific when it occurs. It's always when the iPhone is logged and fully recharged and it's on its charger. VoiceOver then anounces: "100 % charged".
Because this always happens in the early morning hours I deactivate the VoiceOver voice when I go to bed.

By Brad on Tuesday, January 16, 2024 - 01:03

I forgot siri doesn't read out notifications.