Screen locks while VoiceOver is in the middle of reading a notification on the Lock Screen

Category
Miscellaneous
Severity
Moderate

Description

While VoiceOver is reading the contents of a notification on the Lock Screen, the iPhone may spontaneously lock, interrupting speech and requiring the user to unlock the device and try viewing the notification again.

Steps to reproduce

Unlock the iPhone and swipe to a notification. The longer its contents, the likelier the issue is to occur, however, there does not seem to be a clear way to reliably reproduce it.

Bug First Encountered

iOS/iPadOS 18.5

Device(s) bug has been encountered on

iPhone

How often the bug occurs

Sometimes

Apple feedback #

FB18818276

Status

Active

Options

Comments

By Mert Ozer on Wednesday, July 16, 2025 - 23:27

Another problem when reading notifications on the lock screen or the notification center is when a new notification comes in, VO generally jumps to the top item on the lock screen, likely time or date on the lock screen/notification center. Am I the only one who has this annoyance?

By Peter Holdstock on Thursday, July 17, 2025 - 06:45

LOCKING of device is happening frequently FOR me.

By Brad on Thursday, July 17, 2025 - 07:14

If you turn off low power mode, you should be able to go to the settings where you can decide how long it is until your screen locks and turn that off.

The only thing is; I don't know how to get there so you'll have to search for low power in the search part of settings, same with lock screen.

By sechaba on Thursday, July 17, 2025 - 10:03

I don't think it's a bug. I suspect it's a setting which allows your device for a certain period before it gets locked again. In any case, to get around this unlock your phone, go to home and swipe down with 3 fingers to get to your notifications. Once on home screen your phone won't lock it'self again.

By Lee on Thursday, July 17, 2025 - 10:13

No think there is some confusion here. This only started in 18.5. We are talking about when your phone is locked. Any notification that arrives used to be read in total. However, now after about 4 or 5 seconds the phone just locks itself again. There is no setting to make this stop doing this as you can't specify how long you want the locked screen to remain open. You can stop the phone locking but that is different. Also now notifications are repeated twice when vo speaks them. A different bug.

By Lee on Thursday, July 17, 2025 - 10:18

About 7 or 8 seconds before it locks but you get the idea.

By Holger Fiallo on Thursday, July 17, 2025 - 14:58

Yes it is. I get it sometimes. It comes and goes. iOS 18.5 and 16 pro max.

By fatih on Thursday, July 17, 2025 - 17:36

I have the same thing, too.
IOS latest version Δ±Phone 13.
It disturbs me a lot, because I use voiceover on a very slow speed (50%) and I ahve to often pause and unpause the speech as it is reading the notification, just so the screen won't lock and voiceover doesn't stop rading the notification.
It's very annoying.

By Jeff on Thursday, July 17, 2025 - 17:53

If you have your iPhone configured to do so, when your phone is locked and a new notification comes in, your phone (should) wake up and speak the notification. It should read the entire notification then go back to sleep. The problem is that it goes back to sleep before it finishes reading long messages. The phone is never unlocked during this process and that's as it should be. Voiceover needs to keep the phone awake while it's reading the message and only allow it to go back to sleep once it finishes reading. This is definitely a bug.

Another bug I experience about 50% of the time is that when a message comes in, the phone doesn't wake up at all, nor does it make the incoming message sound. The only way I discover I have new messages on my lock screen is to wake up my phone myself. This does work as it should sometimes, so it's not a settings problem. Voiceover just has some serious issues when it comes to reading incoming messages on the lock screen.