Talk Forward Screen Reader

You already get it ordered bro? Happy for you.

You left our macos and our voiceover. Now you are leaving our ios and our voiceover?
...
You won't hear good morning from us anymore.

Apple doesn't like anybody. True story. 🤨

I installed Talk Forward today on a Pixel 10 Pro. And turned it on. I found that after enabling Braille Display, it cannot find my display it says searching and no displays found. My Brailliant BI-20X operates fine and normally with TalkBack.
I don't know how to troubleshoot this or if it is even possible. TalkBack works with it fine, after I exit Talk Forward and re-open TalkBack as well.
I get the sense Braille is not a top priority and I can understand that. But this is a show stopper for me personally.
Has anyone used a Braille display with Talk Forward successfuly? If so, which one?

Hi Trenton, Not sure I follow you entirely. I did use the Play Store version, which was updated pretty recently, thru the angle gestures support according to the release note. But still likely behind the beta. I assume you used the beta?
As for HumanWare eReader, it is different but very similar software to the Brailliant Bi-20X. Since mine is already paired with the phone and works with TalkBack, not sure what is going on there. Glad its working for you, maybe it is just a "me" problem. Which is unfortunate for me, but that's ok.

Maybe the dev made TalkForward a little.. too.. like VoiceOver? 😇

I've not encountered anything new here with iOS 26. Things are normal across my displays. Unless you mean 27 betas, I mostly stay away from early betas and haven't used anything iOS 27.

Oh, there have been a number of posts on this already since iOS 26 first released to the public. If you're not having any issues, then kudos to you good sir.

Braille has always been an adventure. I still recall when iOS 4 wouldn't use my display for most of a year. The long term dream is to get to the standard HID interface and no more proprietary drivers. This is taking an extremely long time. It will be good for Android too.

I'm glad I at least have a few other android braille display users! it's a bit finicky, but I did manage to get my brailliant bi 40x to work with talkForward, and it works just like talkback, except it doesn't use talkback 17 under the hood, so no braille display command customization. one of these days, I hope yanek really opens the braille display side of it up to us instead of restricting what google allows for braille displays. lol.
Just so everyone's aware, talkForward 26.07.06 is out and it fixes a lot of different issues, for those who sideloaded the apk. for the play store, as others have noted, it's a waiting game from google.

Well, at least you can admit that iOS and Braille is not perfect. Kudos to you on that as well.

For transparency sake, here are a list of AppleVis posts from October to June, showcasing some Braille.. quirks.. with iOS 26.

Enjoy. 😇

• Issue typing QWERTY-style Braille display when connected to iOS device (October 13, 2025)
• Letters are getting scrambled (October 28, 2025)
• Unable to write or navigate with both Focus and Zoomax under latest iOS version (February 6, 2026)
• Critical bug: VoiceOver crash loop when accessing settings with Braille display in Hebrew (March 8, 2026)
• Serious issues when editing text with a Braille display (May 15, 2026)
• Issues pairing Mantis Braille display to iPhone 17E (June 30, 2026)

It just goes to show that even an apple's uniform world, not every configuration works as flawlessly as advertise. 😉

I just picked this up on Google Play and it's definitely better than TalkBack. I have a couple questions. Where does the app store your cloud settings? Is it in your Google account?
Is there a place to view the entire change log? The Play Store only shows changes for the current version, and I'm not sure I want to use the APK, though I may if updates come faster.

I installed it, put a shortcut to it, but after restarting the phone, I can't enter the password and the card pin, it only says the first digit and turns off. I have to turn on Talkback and with it I have to enter the password and the card pin, and for it to work, I have to turn it on from accessibility and put a check mark on it.

This is quite odd. What phone are you using? On my Pixel 10 Pro, I am able to use it during startup, enter my pin, everything really. Wondering if your issue might be device specific?

I am using a Samsung Galaxy S26. I have restarted it 3 times.

Are you talking about version 26.7.7? I'm running it and yes it's good, fantastic actually, though there were a few bugs introduced with Braille keyboard if you use Eloquence. But exciting to see the progress that's been made.

I've heard recently that Apple has started or will be starting to restrict certain features to iPhone Pro models only, which feels extremely crappy to me. I do have an iPhone 17 Pro, but this just feels inordinately wrong to me. I was honestly really hesitant about switching to android because of talkback and it's lag, as well as the angle gestures. I have a terrible memory, and just from hearing their descriptions, I know I wouldn't be able to keep them straight at all. When I heard about talk forward, I got really excited. The only thing that's stopping me other than familiarity with iOS and sort of not wanting to give it up, is the fact that I won't be able to have the Siri voices on an android phone. I really gotten to like the US English mail one voice, so much so that it's now my primary voice on my iPhone.

Apologies for any errors in Dictation, I'm in a rather noisy environment and editing will be difficult.

Thanks,
Shersey

"I'm not impressed with this new screen reader.
Personally, I have a Google Pixel 10 Pro and honestly, the native TalkBack screen reader feels better and I can even use it without any issues
"I have to mention that I downloaded the app from Google Play Store, and honestly, I feel like there are a lot of issues. Plus, it doesn't feel as fast as everyone claims in the previous comments.
"In any case, I'm glad that there are screen reader alternatives that could work better for different phone manufacturers, and I wish luck to the developer and to each one of you who are testing this app.
but I'll comment again, personally I'm not impressed, I feel that TalkBack is much better at this moment. This applies for a Google Pixel 10 Pro XL

I would use this on my Galaxy watch 8

Talkback in my one plus watch is laggy like anything.

I've only been using Android for three months, and my Pixel 10 Pro is not, and is unlikely ever to be, my main device (that is an iPhone 17 Pro). I've tried Talkback, Prudence, Jieshuo and Talk Forward (TF), and they all have their pros and cons in my experience. I started using TF soon after the public release, and remember saying that it felt almost like Voiceover in terms of speed and snappiness. As it has developed my impression is that it has actually become slower, and issues have arisen. The main one for me at present is that double-tapping is unreliable: it sometimes doesn't work at all and I have to use a triple tap, or instead of activating the item it jumps the focus four items to the right. I'm not having this issue with Talkback or the other screen readers, and I wasn't having it when TF was first released. I have reported this, and until it's resolved TF isn't particularly convenient to use on my device.

Of the four Android screen readers I've tried, Talkback certainly has the most latency, but I keep coming back to it because it just seems to be more consistent and reliable. I would like to see TF continue to develop and improve because it does offer a smoother transition for those who either transition from iOS or use both iOS and Android, as I'm doing.

Hi. Yes, I understand you have been using Android for a relatively short time, so there's a learning curve to get the gestures of any screen reader to work best for you.
Personally, I made the fully transitioned to a Google Pixel over 3 years ago, but before that, I tried many Android devices from different manufacturers. My main phone during all that time was an iPhone until, as I mentioned, I completely switched to Google Pixel devices just over 3 years ago.
During the time I've tried Talk Forward, I have personally noticed some issues that others have already mentioned in previous comments, but I can point them out again without any problem. First, the two-finger rotor gesture generally only works when you turn it to the left; turning it to the right usually doesn't work.
Second, the image or screen description feature doesn't work at all. Furthermore, when it comes to the gestures, I repeat: on my Google Pixel 10 Pro XL, they don't respond quickly and often fail to work the way everyone claims they do.
TalkBack definitely isn't perfect, absolutely not, but for the moment, it's the screen reader that provide me the most comfort and the most performance to cover my needs.
I have to point out that today, after using Android for quite some time, I don't use the swipe left or right gestures much. Most of the time I use explore by touch, and this definitely speeds up your performance. I've been using TTS Acapela voices for quite some time, and it's another factor to consider. Definitely, depending on the type of voice synthesizers you use, you're going to notice an increase in the speed of the screen reader.
At one point, I also thought I would never use Android as my
primary phone, but after a long time, I realized that Android
actually gave me what I needed and the iPhone was no longer the option I need it. That was when over 3 years ago, I made the complete transition after being in the Apple ecosystem for around 13 years.
Currently, my main phone is a Google Pixel 10 Pro XL, and all my day-to-day tasks—everything I do, including parts of my work—I do using Android. Nowadays, in my personal life, the iPhone is a thing of the past

Regarding caps lock as modifier, you need to go in to the app scripts section, download the keyboard one from there, then select it as the keymap. One disadvantage here, and I hope this will be fixed soon, is you are unable to see the actual key mappings or even make changes to said keymap until you've duplicated it, and also of note, you can make changes to the duplicate, but not while it is in use. Again, hope that will be improved upon. Lastly, while we are able to add our own key mappings, we are as of yet unable to add ctrl, alt, or meta to any other key combination, so as of this moment, you can have caps plus any letter, number, space, tab, escape, enter or any arrow, and you can also add shift to those separately, but you can't do stuff like ctrl caps whatever to jump to a different container, no key combos to jump to top or bottom, etc. So as of this moment, while I love the progress being made, it's still missing the fullness of the old talkback enhanced keymap.
What I would really love to see though in the end is less reliance on a modifier for basic navigation. I'd love to see just basic arrow/tab navigation work better, not jump you around seemingly at random, enter always work to activate an item, and only need the modifier for very screen reader specific stuff, like next container, next window, links list, headings list, talk forward menu, etc. But for just basic navigation, have it feel more like NVDA ported to Android, where we're not using a single modifier for everything.
Another frustration of caps as modifier is that it does seemingly activate the caps lock at the same time. This may well be something that you can't get around with Android. I don't really know. I've made sure to mention it though, and look forward to seeing the progress made.

Hey bro,
Sorry you haven't had much luck with Talk Forward. For me, the rotor works either way you turn it, and while the default Talk Forward settings don't feel much different to talkback in responsiveness, if you adjust some of those settings, it actually does get lots better. Haven't really had any problems with gestures either. I am actually a pretty big fan of this screen reader, and have been using it only for about a month. The developer is great about taking in to account user feedback and requests, usually pushes out releases fairly quickly, and is easy enough to interact with, which is something google devs can't say. At the beginning I didn't think I'd choose anything else over Talkback either, but I'm convinced. This is the awesome thing about Android though, choice.

Yeah, also when using Eloquence TTS, the Braille keyboard does not work well, as I often get double speak from Eloquence, where it reads out the contraction plus computer Braille at the same time. This is because with other tts he has done a thing where it uses certain audio files to read out instead of waiting on the tts to process it, in order to speed things up, or at least that is how I understand what he did, but it doesn't work with Eloquence at all, and has made typing a lot harder. Well, to be more precise, typing is just as easy, but concentrating on what you are typing is near impossible with the double speak. I do however think this will be fixed in coming days. It is better with Google TTS, but I kinda like my Eloquence and would rather not give it up.
Also, I do expect continued improvements with the keymaps. Not sure what else is planned, but even with the issues I've pointed out here, I'm still quite happy with the progress that's been made.