Alright, so. We're a couple weeks away from the launch of iOS 16 to every iOS device that's an iPhone 8 or later. So by now, I'm sure everyone's been wondering, "Should I update?"
I'd say that depends on your priorities. In my testing over the past few months, I've discovered a number of issues, most of which have yet to be fixed.
Let's start with notifications.
When you swipe down to access the notification center, normally, you can double tap on a notification to launch the app it's associated with. This forum topic will no doubt send out an Applevis tweet, for example. Which means that, if you're like me, and have notifications for the Applevis Twitter account set up, you'll see this topic has been posted when you access your notification center.
However, if you try to double tap the notification from within the notification view, nothing will happen. You will not be able to open it. Swiping down to access the more menu also fails to work, as all you get is the options menu which allows you to mute notifications for some time.
Another issue with notifications I have experienced is that some voices will start to read a notification, but will fail to read its content. I haven't done the deepest dive into the ins and outs of this issue, but as far as I can tell it seems to happen most often with US premium voices. UK voices don't seem to be effected, for whatever reason. This also includes the newly added Eloquence.
While I'm on the topic of Eloquence, another potentially major issue I've found is that, if you attempt to play a video, or audio, in any browser, speech will become virtually non-existent. As you try to navigate, voiceover will begin to speak for a quarter of a second, then it will completely cut itself off. The only way to stop this is to stop playback. This applies to Eloquence, as well as most high quality US English voices, as far as my testing shows. However, it does not apply to any other high quality variants in other languages.
Interestingly, this does not seem to apply to content played within TV, or any other dedicated streaming apps, including YouTube.
Another thing Apple has tried to push this year is the ability to customize your lock screen. While this was quite problematic early on, I'm happy to say that for me, it's fairly easy to customize the information displayed on my lock screen.
I really don't have much else to say at the moment, but if I come up with something, I'll certainly post it in the comments. Aside from the issues I outlined above, the experience has been smooth. But I thought I'd create this topic a little bit ahead of time to warn people so they aren't blindsided on the day the release comes out.
As it stands now, I'm honestly not sure if I'd update to iOS 16 because as I said, the notification center not working is a small detail, but it has a big impact on every day use, making some things take much longer than they should to get done. On the other hand, the new features in Messages, editing/undoing sent messages, are very very useful.
If you've been testing iOS 16 and have experienced any other issues please feel free to mention them here. I'm sure someone will be grateful.
By Gar, 23 August, 2022
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Comments
Another issue related to notifications
As you are clearing your notifications, sometimes voiceover will read the last notification. You just erased as if it still were there. You know that it is not there because you deleted it. And, in fact, it's no longer there. Yet VoiceOver keeps reading that notification.
What I do is touch the screen and look for the next notification without swiping.
The same happens when you're using the app switcher.
You close an app, but voiceover keeps reading that app that you just closed.
I am still waiting for public beta five to be released. Don't know if it has been released already because I haven't gotten a notification.
But it will be interesting to see what is solved in that version and what continues to be an issue.
iPad 9
Did for it when public beta came out and no issues. Now is stable and with public 4 which should be out tomorrow is better. Still slow but doing well. Apparently iOS 16 for iPad will not be out sane time iOS for iPhone. That is nuts and do not like it.
iPadOS Delayed Release Date
Yes. iPadOS will be released likely late September or October, as will MacOS, due to the introduction of Stage Manager. There are still many issues that need to be worked out with those two operating systems as a result of this rather large new feature.
Stage manager
My iPad 9 will not need it. They should release for those iPad that do not needed because they do not have the m1 or M2 chip.
Media player
The percentage gesture, no longer works, the buttons are now extremely hard to find, the time index is completely on labeled.
Using the Media Player
I'm still able to rewind or fast forward a video using the percentage displayed on the bottom of the screen. However, getting it to display is a bit of an annoyance because the controls disappear after a short time. When you double tap the player iOS assumes I want to pause playback when I actually don't.
Thank you for bringing this one up. I actually forgot about it in my writing.
Direct touch.
I've experienced bugs with direct touch not working properly. Or at all, it's unusable in it's current state, so if you need to use apps that utilize direct touch, I'd say don't update yet. As for notification center, it works for me using the Siri voice. I do like the new lock screen features.
I cant get the lock screen features to work
Can someone give me a hand as to how to get these to work?
I'm wondering about potential Braille issues
Hi, guys! I'm wondering the same thing, but, from a different perspective. Are there any issues with IOS, Ipad-OS related to braille displays or braille on these platforms? If so, I'd like to know.
Focus in control ceter
I have noticed that the focus button in the control center has no label. And it is not reliable in telling if a focus is active or not. If one is active turning it off seems to be hit and miss. That is a major annoyance.
Notifications?
Hi all. Have I understood this correctly from the original post? In iOS16, nothing happens when you double-tap on a notification with Voice Over, so you can't open the associated app from the notification? So the only way to open the relevant app is to go into the app manually and try to find the information or message that was in the notification? Are other people seeing this same issue? If so, I won't be upgrading until this is fixed. Thanks.
Not having this issue on my iPhone 13 Mini
Hi. As the subject says, I'm not having this issue on my phone, which is on public beta 4. I can activate notifications without a problem. I was having some weird issues with direct touch, but those haven't been a problem for me since the last beta.
Notifications
For me it’s not as serious as stated above. While double tapping on a notification does not reliably open the app first time, simply double tapping on it a second time does the trick.
The lack of the More option in the rotor is also annoying, although you can instead double tap and hold or triple tap to open that Context menu. Of course that is less discoverable if you don’t know to do it.
Regarding Focus in control centre, it’s surprising that they broke this quite late in the beta cycle. I find the easier way to switch a focus off is to use the new item at the bottom of the Lock Screen.
Focus
I'm not having this issue with focus on my iPhone 13. The element is labeled and I can turn a focus on or off with ease.
As for notifications, unfortunately, I did try double tapping more than once. No matter how many times I do so, it never seems to help. I've tried restarting my phone and that doesn't fix it. This may be dumb, but I'm considering trying a full factory reset. I don't know why that would fix it but I did have notifications working at one point, for like a day, on my old phone (an iPhone XR) while also running the beta. It too had this issue though.
I haven't experience no speech when stream or playing media
What is your phone model? I haven't experienced this. I've used the Pluto TV app the Fox2 Detroit app OOtunes Tunein and other apps. I would like to reproduce this if possible.
Reproduce Broken Speech
Hi Dennis,
I'm using an iPhone 13. You can reproduce this by doing the following. I'll provide a website as an example.
1. Set your voice to Alex, Tom Enhanced, Samantha Enhanced, or any of the US Eloquence voices. It may work for other enhanced US English voices, but I'm not sure. However, standard variants don't seem to be affected. Nor do enhanced variants from the other English languages I tested.
2. Navigate to any website wherein you can play video or audio from within Safari (I believe Chrome does the same thing but I'm not sure) and begin playback.
An example website this will work on follows:
http://bananavision.tv:8000/trekmobile.mp3
3. Wait for a few seconds for the playback to begin, then try to swipe around the screen. You'll notice that voiceover speech suffers and the only way to fix it is to stop playback entirely, or to switch voices to a standard variant. As soon as you attempt to switch back to the enhanced it will just start up again.
New iOS 16 Developer Beta
Hi all,
A new iOS 16 developer beta dropped today.
I'm sad to say that as far as I can tell, everything I mentioned in the beginning of this thread is indeed still a problem. This includes me having difficulties with speech and video playback within browsers and being unable to properly activate notifications. At this point, I am starting to lean more in the direction of you probably shouldn't update to iOS 16 lest these issues plague you. Since they aren't fixed, I fear they may be low on Apple's priority list. If so, they probably won't be fixed for some time.
Just generally a massive mess in terms of accessibility.
This is definitely not a worthwhile update. Something tells me that iOS 16.1 will be coming out as a beta soon. And maybe some of those issues will be fixed. But as of right now, the media player is a mess, voiceover verbiage, and you’re becoming very Clipped and choppy, focus tends to be lost a lot. It’s really really bad this year.
Not experiencing most of the issues mentioned here
1. Activating notifications requires an extra double-tap after the first initial double-tap for a group of notifications. So I can live with it.
2. Audio/video playback on the web makes VoiceOver speech a bit slow, but it's nowhere as disastrous as to be labelled a huge issue - at least with my iPhone 13 Pro Max.
So, again in sharp contrast to the previous comment, I don't think iOS 16.0 is a "massive mess in terms of accessibility". Of course, using such so-called sensitive labels or subject lines is something and mentioning or reporting bugs for the sake of helping others is something else. Barring Braille which I don't use and can't test, I don't see any seriously deal-breaking access-oriented issues in iOS 16.0. And, for the sake of completion, I wish the App Manager didn't have focus issues with VoiceOver. Yet again, it's more of an annoyance not a serious regression.
Voice quality
The high quality Allicin voice has been my preferred voice for many years. Now it sounds so terrible I can't use it on my iPhone 8 that is running the iOS 16 public beta. I believe other voices have the same strange distortion, but I'm not as used to using them. I've started using Eloquence even though I don't want it, because at least it isn't too weird with the disgusting sound profile they've given voices now. I can't be the only one with this problem. Right? No way am I downgrading my iPhone 13 with this problem.
Re: Not experiencing most of the issues mentioned here Bookmark
I’m hurt that the response is to disagree just because a person is not going through the same exact issues. Keep in mind that everybody’s use of these devices is vastly different. however, the media player is indeed a mess. The choppiness of voiceover is occurring quite regularly. PDFs can’t even be edited anymore. To simply say that you’re not going through something doesn’t mean that others aren’t. And this has been my biggest problem with Applevis for literally years. When anyone leaves any feedback, hoping for some help, suggestions, camaraderie, and even assistance in reporting these issues, the general response is to go kick rocks.
It makes it very difficult to wanna come back to this website, or to provide any feedback or thoughts. Everyone’s just attacking each other or disagreeing with each other, and I’d rather find allies to systematically determine what’s causing these issues, report them, and come up with fixes
Re Re: Not experiencing most of the issues mentioned here
@Vash Rein, Do you expect people to agree with you without first being able to duplicate your reported issues? No one wants to hurt you unless we define the verb "hurt" differently. All of us should report issues to Apple instead of seeking "camaraderie" on forums. As far as I see it, Your comment with the subject "Just generally a massive mess in terms of accessibility" didn't ask for any sort of assistance - you just concluded "It’s really really bad this year." Sorry, but I don't think "It’s really really bad this year." And, last but not least, I haven't seen very few, if any, instances of harsh disagreements or attacks on AppleVis to make such lurid conclusions.
Re Re: Not experiencing most of the issues mentioned here
They are confirmed issues. Engineers from Apple have confirmed all these issues. And there are several reasons why they’re confirmed.
I don’t think this website is for me anymore. I believe I’m better suited using other resources. This is a very closed website. No longer want the account and I no longer want to post and I no longer want to visit.
Re Re: Not experiencing most of the issues mentioned here
The decision is all yours. Take care.
Holger...
Holger, as I've said on another post on which you commented, You seem to be a bit demanding. The best thing you can do is to send feedback and report bugs, just like everyone else is doing. Don't like something? Work to have it changed. Submit that feedback to developers. And for the love of all that's good, be patient. No one likes a whiner.
And with that, I too would like my account on this site deleted if at all possible. IF this is what to read when I visit these forums for resources, I'd rather just not. Best wishes to those who will continue to use this site.
Re Re Re: Not experiencing most of the issues mentioned here
Vash, could you possibly direct me to the documentation that confirms Apple is aware of the issues I mentioned? I'm curious now.
Still studdering speach in iOS 16 newest Beta?
Hey all,
to begin with this was when I looked at the first dev beta of iOS 16, so things might have changed by now.
Back when i tryed the beta every voice was sort of studdery when reading long text. It would put huge pauses after symbols like a comma, periot and what not. Unlike iOS 15 where reading of books with VO was pritty smooth and, to use an analogy was basically galloping along a lush field on horseback, in iOS 16 this turned into a bumpy ride with uneaven ground, tree routes in your way and low hanging branches.
Hey, don't judge me, it's the first thing that came to mind :D.
so, did that behaviour change or is it still the case?
At Holger
So, just let me get this straight for a second.
You want all iPads that are not stage manager compatible to receive the update to iOS 16.0 and only the iPads that are in fact stage manager compatible should receive the update to iOS 16.1 later on in the year?
Sorry but from a business perspective this doesn't make any sense. Why have parts of the lineup with iOS 16.0 and the others with the current iOS 15 build till 16.1 is out and the ones that had 16.0 before could update to that version anyway?
This would be super inificient to manage and possibly take more work hours than needed, so the update for all iPads to 16.1 later on and jumping iOS 16.0 completely is the most logical and easy step for all partys involved.
So it makes more sense to…
So it makes more sense to punish those of us who can not use stage manager? We have to deal with beta because of that. Maybe they need to hold off on release it until stage manager is fix and those of us just deal with it! What business deal is that!!!!
@Holger You don't have to…
@Holger You don't have to deal with the beta. You actively choose to install buggy software. I would understand if you are annoyed with a release being buggy, but installing beta software is entirely on you.
Stage Manager
Hi @Holger,
I'm admittedly a bit confused as to what the source of your issue is.
As someone said above, this is pre-release software. The chances of it actually being stable are iffy. But that is essentially the point. Both the developer and public betas of iOS rely heavily on the user to find bugs.
Let's be real. People are weird. People are creative. There is no one shoe size fits all in terms of system configuration, use case, etc. That's why users as a community are given the chance to test beta software in the first place. Developers can't possibly catch all the issues, so the more information Apple can get from its users, the more likely it is they can smooth things out in time for the mainstream, official, public release.
That being the case, of course Stage Manager is buggy. It is a feature built into the core OS that has never been attempted before. It's impossible to know how the feature would interact with every aspect of a user's device, as the code that runs them is extremely complicated.
The fact that iPadOS 16 is being pushed back is a sign of how broken the feature is. But it is also a sign that Apple takes it extremely seriously. No one is being "punished" as you put it. In fact, for those who use the feature releasing it as is would be a punishment in a sense, as it clearly has issues.
Since you aren't a developer for Apple, you can't dive into the code to fix the issues. But that doesn't mean you can't help. Follow Apple's guidelines for reporting bugs, report them whenever you encounter one. The more detail you can provide, the better. If that's not something you feel you have the time for, and if the experience is severely disrupting how you use your device, I would strongly encourage you to downgrade your device and to just try not to worry about it for now.
Re: Stuttering Speech Situation?
Hi DataWolf,
I find speech stutters a bit while reading articles in Apple News, but mostly when voiceover automatically continues onto a new paragraph.
Aside from that, voiceover is a bit weird for me when notifications come in, as I've described above. But the experience is pretty smooth otherwise.
I hope this helps.
Ios16
Hi all. These issues are not major deal breakers for me. The notifications thing is minor but I can deal with that. I want to test it and play around with new voices. How is voiceover behavior with lock screen customizations? Work arounds for customizations? This is what I'm most excited about because it is long over due in my opinion.
Stage manager
Those of us who uses iPad without M1 or M2 chip will not able to use it. iOS 16 is now F instead of a and next RC. Instead of having iOS out for my iPad I have to deal with the issues that my iPad does not even use.
Customizing The Lockscreen
Hi Ann Marie,
So far in my limited testing, setting up custom lock screens is fairly painless. I was able to select a few items along with roughly where I wanted to place them on my screen, though I didn't decorate it much.
Hope this helps.
Pre M1 iPads
Hello Holger,
I can understand your frustration, but as I said, Stage Manager is built into the very core of the OS. This likely requires extensive rewriting, with dependencies in place to make sure the feature doesn't cause problems on devices that don't use it. I'm not an Apple engineer, I don't know how these things work. But at least your iPad will get an update at all.
My first time beta testing, and I have enjoyed it.
It is my first time beta testing iOS and I have enjoyed it very much.
Sure, there are some issues to be fixed but they are not showstoppers.
The experience has been great.
I don't see the reason why we have to get so demanding or stress over these things.
if we decide to participate in this program, we have to be very aware that we will encounter bugs, some bad, and others not too bad.
It is like they say: if you cannot stand the heat, do not enter the kitchen.
In my case, I have noticed that I cannot delete some of the Siri voices I have downloaded for the rotor languages.
I am constantly switching between Spanish, English and Italian.
If I want to select a Siri voice, for either Spanish, or Italian, VoiceOver will switch back to the default voice of that language.
I have submitted reports to Apple, and, in time, I know that they will fix it.
For now I am using other voices, but I honestly have never considered the idea of using eloquence because, in my modest opinion, eloquence does not sound good to me.
I am glad we have different options to choose from and for the same reason I am happy for those who love eloquence.
In the meantime, I will just keep reporting to Apple whatever issues I find and, hopefully, they will be fixed soon.
If anyone asked me if I think iOS 16 is worth it, I will say that definitely it is.
Direct touch. Still bugged.
Direct touch is still not working properly. I have a feeling this just isn't going to be fixed before full release since we're only a couple weeks away.
App switcher is still not working.
Subject says it all. Despite Apple updating my bug report with words to the effect they think they have a fix and it may now be working nada. So suspect this won't be fixed in time for the release either. Oh and for me at least this is a major bug and whilst not a total show stopper it isn't good.
App switcher working fine here.
From time to time there is a little issue with focus but, most of the time, app switcher works just fine.
Not a big deal for me.
The iOS 16 RC Candidate Is Out
The iOS 16 Release Candidate dropped yesterday. I'm sorry to say that if you have been experiencing any bugs, they will make it into the final release most likely. Although, the video player does seem to have improved slightly where layout is concerned.