The situation, folks, is this: every time I read a message in reply to another message in a Whatsapp chat, Voiceover now reads the original message before reading the reply. I can see in theory why this might sound like a splendid idea but for myself, I find it extremely annoying. I've read replies to very long messages recently, and having to listen to the whole original message again before I hear the reply is extremely irksome. What are people's thoughts? Is this a feature, or a bug? Do you like the new behaviour? Is there any way of reverting to the old behaviour for those of us who find this annoying or am I just going to have to get used to it? Using IOS26.2 on an iPhone 16 Pro Max.
Comments
You can't revert, but you can work around it
Hi there,
There's no way to revert to the old behavior. But you can work around it. Swipe down on the message a few times, and you can copy it. Then you can paste it into the text field to read it and undo once you're done. I realize this is convoluted, but it's either that, suffer through a message of varied length, or switching platforms. Which I know not everyone is inclined to do, even when you're dealing with companies like the Facebook company.
Hope it's a bug
Hello. I experience the same problem with VO and what's app message replies. I hope it's a bug and gets resolved soon. :)
Sighted users
Do sighted users see the original message somehow? I think that's intended, and I like it this way.
It's not a good feature all the time
If you're listening to a reply to a very long message, it's not a good feature at all. Sighted people at least have the ability to skip straight to the bit they're interested in - not necessarily by use of in-app gestures, but simply by using their eyes. It's a rotten feature.
I hate it
I too noticed this straight away and I hate it. It’s very annoying and slows me down a lot.
Microsoft Teams does this too, and I actually sent them a suggestion last year to change the behaviour, citing how WhatsApp handled replies at the time as a much better approach. Instead the opposite has happened. Sigh.
Dave
I too have noticed this
As the subject says, I've noticed this too. Like other posters, I am most displeased by how Voiceover reads replies to messages in the current version of WhatsApp. Having to basically reread a message I've already read, then wait until the end to hear the reply, is extremely inefficient and I can't think why this should be a thing.