iOS 26 Developer Beta 5 Has Released

Yes. VoiceOVer crash issue is gone.

Can voices be finally downloaded effortlessly in beta 5?

Do we know if it is out?

same. When developer beta comes out usually on Tuesdays, Apple releases the public beta one day after the developer beta with the same feature set as the developer beta build, so be expecting the public beta either tomorrow or the day after.

I am still unable to download the Samantha enhanced voice. Also, all of my voiceover activities got completely vanished and deleted.

Alex still fails to download. I double tap on the voice, and it just sits there.

Seriously! What is Apple doing with these betas? I won't grab the beta then.

Wise. They're testing software with a pre-release. It's not fully baked. I'm waiting until full release in September. My phone is too important to lose any functionality.

I think that there is some sort of cashing issoe with these voices and only a foll reset can fix this. At least that is what Apple Support recommended.

When jumping into a tab bar like in Apple Mosic, it says space instead of 1 of 5 or all the other numbers. Anyone else seeing this?

Yeah, seeing this too. However there's a setting under verbosity now, I think it's new, to change list behaviour. If you change this to "read", the list values will be read again. I was so happy when I found this, and it fixed VO saying space after every tab title and instead went back to saying the list number, but I then noticed that VO then will announce list values for a whole number of other items too, where it hasn't been doing this before, so I had to turn it off again to not turn crazy... Might be a new feature or change that needs some more fine-tuning.

On ipad air m2 doesn’t/ function at all. After i introduce passcode voiceover restart and the ipad is again locked .

Hi,
I've reported this before, but I'm unable to move apps to the dock on my iPad, using edit mode. If I perform a double tap and hold and drag it manually, sometimes I can get it to work.
Has anyone else seen this?

If you have a Magic keyboard, you'll find some oqptions for your trackpad. You can have text under your pointer now. Still no interaction, but we're almost there.

Hi,
I was working today & my volume fluctuated several times.
I had to turn it down, using the volume buttons.

I still can't download some voices, especially the enhanced quality ones. This seems to happen more often with the default voices for each language. For example, it happens with Samantha because she's the default voice for American English. A temporary workaround for this problem is to temporarily change the device's language, download the desired voice, and then return to the previous language. For example, if we want to download Samantha's voice in its enhanced quality, we can temporarily switch the iPhone to Spanish, download the voice, and then return to English.

My VoiceOver still crashes sometimes, even on iOS 26 beta 5, but I've noticed this happens much more frequently on older devices, like the iPhone 11 Pro Max, than on my iPhone 16 Pro, suggesting some memory overflow issues.

I tried switching the phone to English and then download some german voicis that I ckn't download and still no luck.

This is a true show-stopper especially after so many betas and so many bug reports. That's also preventing me from installing and testing iOS 26 betas on my 16 Pro Max.

Hello everyone,

I wanted to report that I'm still experiencing major issues with VoiceOver in iPadOS 26 beta 5.

I'm using a new iPad Pro with the M4 chip, and ever since beta 4, VoiceOver keeps crashing or freezing randomly. Unfortunately, these problems have not been resolved in beta 5.

As of today, VoiceOver is still crashing on my iPad Pro M4 while running iPadOS 26 beta 5.

In my case, VoiceOver suddenly becomes unresponsive or the system crashes completely while navigating. Sometimes, I have to force restart the device to get things working again.

This makes the iPad almost unusable for me as a blind user who relies entirely on VoiceOver. I hope Apple is aware that this issue still exists in beta 5, at least on M4 iPads.

Is anyone else still experiencing this in beta 5?

Thanks,
Yoni from Israel

I went to check out the "Games" app, however I noticed various parts of the UI are not fully accessible. For instance, on the section titled "Continue playing", game titles are unlabeled. Voiceover says "button" for each item. Also in the section where it lists recommended people to add, it doesn't tell you everything on one element. For instance, for each one finger swipe, it will list each name, but then after some time it will then keep saying something about the info being found in contacts.

Has anybody had a chance to experience the accessibility nutrition labels that were mentioned during the WWDC keynote? That is supposed to help people find out if apps in the App Store are accessible. Are they live yet in the beta versions? If you’re not sure what I’m talking about. Check out the link below.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/05/apple-unveils-powerful-accessibility-features-coming-later-this-year/

I've already reported these problems to Apple's accessibility team through the feedback app, I think it was in the second or third beta, but they haven't fixed it yet.

Hello. So not sure if this is a feature I accidentally turned on. But, Dot 8, or Space E, no longer act as the Return key. Yes, I checked Braille Commands, it's still there. Yes, I rebooted. And yes, I toggled VoiceOver. But it won't go away. In addition, typing things like I, L, etc, when not in text fields, says the following: "Link not found," "Image not found," "Table not found," etc etc. Anyone experiencing this and / or know how to fix it? This is iOS 26 Developer Beta on an iPhone 15.

Hi, It could be that nav quick keas is active.
Press on 1-2-3-4-5+Space to turn it off.

Well on Public beta 2 if you use the rotor to change voices UK Siri voice 3 doesn't work. Every swipe or just anything gets her to spout a load of garbage before fortunately saying the element or you wouldn't be able to change voice again. This was in beta 1 as well but not fixed in beta 2.

Having taken a look at my sighted friend's 16 Pro which has been updated to the latest iOS 26 beta, I can confirm this, but with US English Siri voices. These betas have long-standing issues with voices, and Apple hasn't fixed them. Voices either can't be downloaded, or they don't work.

That toggles screen curtain. Nav quick keys? I don't think that exists. If you're talking about Quick Nav, that already is off.

This you did by accident. Try this.
Toggle Single Letter Quick Nav
Space + Dots 1 2 3 4 5 7
Let us know if it helps.

That fixed it. That's strange, I never remembered that being a thing, nor did I remember turning it on.
Thanks for your help.
That aside, I have noticed a few braille bugs.
• Sometimes, braille displays are inconsistent about how it shows elements. Sometimes instead of btn, it will display as button. Or, instead of tb, it will be displayed as tab. I've noticed this applies to other things, such as selected instead of seld.
• The bug with period space still exists. Where once you insert a period with braille screen input, and do a Space, VoiceOver says periodspace.

Bugs aside, don't forget to check out the extra options for how VoiceOver speaks or plays things. For instance, Actions available let's you customize its verbosity. This also includes links. Hopefully they add more stuff in future.

I've noticed some new things in the files app, but I think they might be intentional changes and not bugs.

In the browse tab I had my view set to list, but now that causes a lot of extra information to be read along with folders. VoiceOver would say something like "forward, collapsed, folder name, iCloud download." Obviously, this is a lot of information to sift through, but I think it is actually what is on the screen because navigating by character reads all of it as well. It seems like there are extra columns of info now, it kind of reminds me of macos finder being set to list view and having all the columns show up in a table, except you can't interact here to only get the info you want, like the folder name.

I can't find anything in view options to change anything, except to set the view to icons. Then it behaves as it used to. I haven't reported it though since I think it might be an intended change since the files app got a big upgrade, particularly on the iPad.

I love that you can finally choose what app opens a specific file type though. No more always having to go to the share sheet if you want to open something in a different app. Thank you Apple!

VoiceOver used to say "x of y" after "Example tab" on iOS 26 Beta 4, but now it just says " "/"space". I've not reported that to Apple yet, but I'll do that pretty soon.

I noticed that the public betas started coming out also. I turned off developer betas but am now seeing public betas. I think they are up to the 2nd public beta. I installed that and it seems to work very well.

One issue I did find and report is that, in the list of messages for a particular mesage thread, the "Back" button is grayed out using Voiceover. On the other hand, even though the button is spoken as grayed out by Voiceover, when activated it does return to the main dialog in the Messages app with the list of all messages.

So what is the relation between the developer betas and public betas? I thought that once the public betas started coming out that they were both the same.

--Pete

I'm glad it fixed it. Remember if you want things added submit feedback. For example I want to be able to go buy next and previous button and same for radio button. I submitted feedback for this. The reason is if I know it is a check out button I can add a command for next button if they had that choice and quickly go rather then form field which will show search field etc. so just a hint to hopefully help.

Yes the back button works but says it shouldn't also in the phone app they have renamed delete to bin which seems very pointless.

after reading the title of the bottom tabs of the apps that contain them, VoiceOver always says the word space after the word tab. I know this is not that relevant, but it happens

I have notice this as well.