Samsung Tumbles Talkback! Again! (OneUI 8/Android 16)

By Trenton Matthews, 19 September, 2025

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Android

https://accessibleandroid.com/samsungs-one-ui-8-0-update-all-but-bricks-phones-for-talkback-users/

Check out that above link for more details. But in short, unhide your screen before updating from OneUI 7! Or be like me and switch to/use one of the other Android screen readers in the meantime till Samsung fixes said problem with another update.

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wow

well seems like the year of screenreaders braking after updating, i haven't gotten one UI 8 yet, think i am getting it on my S23+ next month

I don't understand

I don't understand why Samsung is like this. Why partner with Google to incorporate TalkBack, only to make your own version and stuff it up?

I know Samsung had their own screen reader before partnering with Google, Voice Assist or something along those lines? I don't remember if it was any good compared to TalkBack, I only remember playing with it briefly when I had an S8. But I was low vision back then, so didn't need the screen reader, just magnification and high contrast.

So, compared to TalkBack and VoiceOver, how much better is Commentary?

In response to Justin (Sorry for double-commenting)

Kinda reminds me of the mainstream video game world nowadays, where games are released and they are broken, so the developers have to release a Day 1 patch. It's a bit silly, just release things when you know they're gonna work. Wastes less time for both the developers and consumers.

Third-party screen readers for the win!

With PSR, available on the Google play store, and CSR, available via the Interwebs, at least there's always a backup in case TalkBack breaks on any particular device. 😅

So true

this is one thing I really like about android

This is disappointing

Why won’t Samsung just go back to using its own screen reader? It used to do this before android 11, so why can’t they do it now?

Voice Assistant (Galaxy Talkback)

, was Samsung's version of the screen reader before they partnered up with Google. From Android 10 and earlier, you were able to switch between both screen readers at will. One turned off, and the other turnned itself on.

One of the key differences, was that the 'magic-tap' command was used to interact with accessibility rotor actions instead of a one-finger tap/double-tap. Also, the speech on/off toggle was a 2-finger quadruple-tap instead of the normal 2-finger triple-tap. Though there was also the hardware keyboard command CTRL+alt+shift+space which did the same thing!

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