Google voice search and Voiceover.

By Darren12, 4 December, 2014

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hi Applevis,
Firstly, I want to take the opportunity to commend you all on the development of a truly beneficial community resource. I'm a relatively recent user of IOS and just thought it may be potentially useful if I drew your attention to what I can only assume is a bug either with the Google voice search app or Voiceover. Yesterday evening I was playing around with Google voice search so I toggled VO speech off. After not getting any response from the app, or triple click home, I attempted to toggle speech on again and my Iphone 6 refused to do anything. In the end, I resorted to asking Siri to enable Voiceover. When VO came up, it had apparently dumped me on the lock screen and the phone had forgotten my touch ID. I was able to resolve things by entering my passcode and redoing the touch ID. For a relatively new user, I found this experience both disconcerting and slightly scary. I've subsequently replicated my actions and have not experienced this odd behavior since. However, I had previously used Google voice search with VO speech turned off and failed to encounter anything strange, so maybe this was an isolated crash, It was incredibly unusual however so I merely wanted to post it on this forum to make you all aware of the possibility of someone having a similar experience.
Best wishes,
Darren.

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Comments

By Usman on Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - 20:11

I've never had the issue you're describing. I've always been able to use google voice search just fine with VO enabled.

By Darren12 on Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - 20:11

Hi Usman,
Pleased to hear you've never experienced this very peculiar issue. Sometimes I find that Voiceover interrupts the Google TTS so I toggle speech off. This has only happened once to me so far, and at the time and even now I am completely at a loss to explain what precisely happened with the phone. On reflection, I'm reasonably confident that Voiceover did indeed experience some kind of a crash as I've got the clicking sounds enabled when VO is turned off and those came up when the phone died. Hopefully, it won't crop up again, though I've seen occasional VO crashes in IOS8.1.1, particularly when ending dictation.
Kind regards,
Darren.

By Tarbaby on Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - 20:11

The last time it happened I found out that it had switched from my Bluetooth cordless headphones to my plugged in wired headphones. Which weren't on my head so I had effectively lost sound andvoiceover control. But it was only because I couldn't hear anything because it was all coming out to the other headphones. And I suspect it is an iOS 8.1.1 issue.because on another such event I was able to fix it by telling Siri to turn off Bluetooth.and then putting on those wired headphones (Which were already plugged in). this had NEVER happened to me before iOS 8.1.1.

By Darren12 on Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - 20:11

Hi Tarbaby,
Love the username by the way, points for originality. The VO crashes I've experienced have been exclusively without headphones and they do occur infrequently generally, and I'm sure as the ios8 cycle continues, these little inconsistencies will gradually disappear. One of the most irritating bugs I've found is actually with Safari and the 2 finger scrub gesture to go back a page, well documented by many people on this site of course.
Best,
Darren.

By Tarbaby on Friday, January 2, 2015 - 20:11

Hi Darren. Yes, Google voice does not play nice with iOS 8.1.1 nor 8.1.2 so far. Thanks!