iOS 27 / iPadOS 27 Beta 3 Megathread

Do you mean this issue has been around since ios 26? I don't think I've noticed it before.

--Pete

Maybe someone already tried but does resetting your iPhone fix the bad sound quality for the voiceover voice if yes, I will probably do it.

For me, yes.

I just installed the beta and my VoiceOver seems to be stuck on the default Samantha voice. If I turn it off and back on, it will switch to Alex to say "VoiceOver on" but then goes right back to Samantha. Is anyone else seeing this? I have an iPhone 16 Pro Max.

I have a similar issue but I like the Samantha voice. It’s not an issue however, if I want to switch to tom tom doesn’t come up. I also have a French voice called Emily, which is when selected will switch, but in the meantime, I’ve received French emails, where the voice has not switched to Emily and has switched to some guy’s voice instead, which is not as easy to understand because he doesn’t annunciate as well so for me this is a problem too. I’m also running an iPhone 16 Pro Max.

I am not having any problems switching voices on my iPhone 16 Pro Max. Voice switching is working as it should. When I installed beta three, it did not default to Samantha. It’s strange how some of us have certain issues and others do not even though we are using the same device. I guess it’s all part of running betas.

I have not noticed this specifically, but generally I am finding that activities I have set with different voices and speeds are not working properly. I rarely get the desired voice or speed when choosing an activity from the rotor settings. I do get some activities switching properly when I use an app associated with a particular activity.

I did report this. Hopefully it will get straightened out.

--Pete

I've not installed any of the iOS 27 betas because I decided to stop beta-testing altogether some time ago. I'm no longer willing to sacrifice my device so that Apple can make more money even though I never get paid for reporting the irritating bugs that should already be crushed by paid Apple engineers themselves, and likely most of my reports were either totally ignored or met with a response stating the issue couldn't be reproduced even though I had been posting about the exact same thing here on Applevis and nobody told me they couldn't reproduce the bug or that my report didn't make any sense. Anyway, my question is that the Cancel button is missing on screens where it used to be present, and I've never witnessed that being mentioned anywhere even on applevis. So was that a deliberate move and was it mentioned anywhere (in the release notes, on Applevis forums, etc.), or is it just a bug that hasn't even been noticed by any VoiceOver users? I have to use a two-finger scrub on such screens and I wonder whether iOS 27 somehow addresses this.

I wonder if this is some kind of aesthetic that has been added recently to iOS? If I remember correctly, non-VoiceOver users can get the same effect as the VoiceOver scrub gesture, by dragging a finger from the left edge of the screen all the way across to the right edge of the screen. Again this would be for non-VoiceOver use of an iPhone.
So, with that said I am wondering if cancel buttons were removed as part of an aesthetic.
Just a thought. 🤷‍♂️

While it's certainly not as predictable as finding and double-tapping a cancel button in a dialog, the same function can often be performed by moving your finger away from the dialog's contents and double-tapping when VoiceOver announces "dismiss popup."

I have found a work around autocorrection and BSI. After swiping right with one finger for space bar, swipe down with your right finger to undo autocorrect. It always works.

How good are the "new" image descriptions? Are they worth upgrading and dealing with bugs? I've done beta testing for apple in the past, so I know how this goes, but I just want to know based on the image description feature for VO, should I upgrade, or just wait for the release in September.

How does the feature work? Do I just swipe down on an image to choose describe photo, kinda like TalkBack? Does it work on any graphic under the cursor?

Thank you!!!

Cory

@Cory - I know this probably isn't the answer you want, but I would not install the beta on your daily driver just to get a new feature. Waaaaay too much can go wrong. The risk is not worth the reward IMHO.

HI Cory. Image description in my opinion makes iOS 27 Beta totally worth upgrading too. Let's take a photo from the photos app for example. When I swipe to the photo it reads a very short description of what's in the photo. When I flick down or up through actions the two items I find useful are Intelligent image description and ask. the intelligent image description provides a BE My Eyes type of description, very detailed. The ask function allows a person to ask about the image. Example. when I move over the photo it may say ship but that's about all. When I use the ask function I can ask questions, what's the name of the ship. What color is the insignia, things like that.
another item I have found verry useful is the live recognition function and the ask function. This function actually allows a user to create a prompt in settings. When invoked It uses the prompt "what is it" however, since I want allot more especially reading from digital screens such as my thermostat, I changed the prompt to ask it to describe things in great detail including anything on a digital screen. Now I can read my thermostat and other digital screens.

I agree with you Johnny, 1000% and as for not installing the beta, I haven’t had any awful experiences a few voiceover issues, but I can live with that audio ducking is a pain because it ducks and then doesn’t undo but these minor things are minor issues and it gives us a look into what we will have come September so I’m all for doing the beta and it’s a fun experience for me and asked for the recognition feature, I haven’t tried that yet Johnny, but thank you for the tip. I definitely will change the criteria in that function.

The issue with be my eyes is that if you got a picture a a lady it did not describe her and what she was wearing. It gave you something about privacy and not be able to describe the person. Suppose your wife or girlfriend sent you a photo of her wearing something nice, will the new Siri describe her or tell you it can not do so. Just asking.

I would say that upgrading to iOS 27 would be worth it, once the public release is out and available for all. Telling people that it's completely worth it to upgrade to a beta release just for the sole purpose of accessing a new feature, is a very cavalier way of thinking. Especially if people only have one device That they have access to.
This gung-ho mentality that everyone absolutely must beta test, solely for the purpose of having new features before others, is really reckless, and I would highly encourage you to just wait until the official release is out.

Thank you, that is all. 🙇

Well said sir. Agree 1000%.

Hi everyone,
My name is Shawn, and I have found IOS27 betas quite good. Beta 1 was fine, but beta 2 had the braille screen input bug which was driving me crazy!
I'm glad that BSI bug was fixed in Beta 3.
I wanted to ask if anyone has been having this problem. When the phone is unlocked and you are using it, and you get a notification, whether that's Gmail, WhatsApp, Snapchat, or almost any app, that Voice Over doesn't read notifications?
The phone vibrates, or when not on silent mode, the phone makes noise, and I can feel a haptic. I know the notification has arrived, however, voice over doesn't read the notification. I have to go to Notification Center and I have to check what the notification is. Usually, the Voice Over would read the notification regardless of how I was using the phone.
I've got an IPhone 16 Pro, and I'm using Daniel at a pitch of 50 and a speaking rate of 100%. Slowing down the speaking rate didn't help. :)
I'm just wondering if anyone has experienced something similar, or if there are any fixes that can be made? I reset all voice over settings but that didn't seem to help.

Thanks for the advice.

Warm regards,

Shawn.

OK, so there are a couple of things you can do here that may help.
First, go to Settings, Accessibility, VoiceOver, Verbosity, System Notifications. Here you can determine how notifications are audibly and haptically displayed as they arrive. You may also want to consider disabling the, Use Silent Mode, feature.
Second, go to Settings, Accessibility, VoiceOver, Quick Settings. Scroll through this list and make sure, "System Notifications", is selected. Then, activate your Quick Settings gesture, and scroll down to, "System Notifications", and double tap to enable it. This will allow VoiceOver to read out notifications as they arrive. If this is off, you'll get the sound effects and haptics, but VoiceOver will not read out anything automatically.

HTH. 😊

Thanks for the help @Brian! Voice Over is reading notifications now! :)
I think I might have accidentally turned off system notifications

Thanks for the advice :)

Shawn.

The public beta is now out. It is still a beta and bugs may be present.

I have been running the developer beta on my M1 iPad Pro, since the first beta, and it's generally working pretty well. After the public beta came out yesterday, I decided I would try it on my phone. There are a few bugs and oddities, but overall it's not too bad, with one exception.

If you are a Low vision user, and use the Zoom feature under Accessibility, do not upgrade to this beta. Whether I turn the switch on in settings, or whether I use the physical action button that I set up to turn this feature on and off, it turns the feature on and off, but the screen will not magnify. If I'm in the Settings app, I can flip the switch, and it turns on and off, but no magnification, no magnification gesture seem to work, and the little controller joystick doesn't appear either, despite it being enabled in settings. Knock on wood, but it seems like the Magnifier app still works, though, the app that turns your phone into a CCTV.

Regarding voiceover, audio quality, I noticed that the beta in General, the audio has a more flat sound to it overall, whether listening to videos, music, or voiceover itself. I'm on an iPhone 16 Pro Max, and the audio just seem to be a little richer in iOS 26. Not quite sure what's up with that.

The image description features like John said, are quite impressive, and Siri itself isn't dumb anymore. It's actually starting to work pretty well.

One feature people haven't been talking about is the custom extensions feature in Safari. I played with this on my iPad, and did it on my phone again because the extensions didn't seem to sync across devices. I went to the verge website, which their new layout is kind of terrible and screen readers don't read the headlines through headings the way they should. I made a custom extension by telling it to turn the article links into actual HTML headings to make them easier for screen readers to use. It originally worked, but made the headings a separate item in addition to the links. I then went in and told it to combine the heading and link into one item rather than being separate. It did so, and it worked. Finally, it was also making the plane text after each article title as a heading, the article flavor text under the headline. I told it that the plane text after each hit link is not an article title so don't include those. Now, when I navigate the verge, I can zip through the headlines quickly and easily. I would love to see this Support iCloud across devices, and even be able to share extensions with others via the share sheet.

There are a few unlabeled buttons, and weird corks. I've noticed so far, but my phone seems overall faster, and voiceover is pretty solid. When creating the Safari extensions, the little verify checkmark button did not seem to be currently focus while using voiceover, so I had to turn it off and tap it visually. I will report that bug, but otherwise it's not too bad. Just don't upgrade if you need the Zoom Accessibility feature, because it seems broken at the moment.

Ok for the 4th year in a row I've just updated to the public beta. Will let you know my thoughts once I've had a play. However, immediately, found the weird VO being quiet issue. It seems to me as if it thinks the speaker is a headset or something. That is how it sounds. Weirdly system sounds seem to come out normally!

Overall for a first public beta this is not at all bad. Here are a few initial thoughts: First as I said in my original post on this the speech seems to act like it is coming out of a headset. It is hard to explain. The issue here is that sounds act like they always did so to hear VO you need it loud which in turn makes sounds very loud. Turning down VO sounds sorts this for now. Also, when swiping VO sometimes almost drops out completely and hangs for a tad before going back to original volume so you may miss parts of words. In the native weather app they have introduced some new features but the biggest issue at the moment is VoiceOver says for example 15:00 o'clock o'clock for every hour. So an extra o'clock is added. The biggest issue I have found is playing media with VO turned on you can hardly hear anything even at full volume. Turning off speech or VO completely seems to sort this and sometimes when you turn speech back on media plays as expected but not very often so scrolling say in TikTok etc means you have to have speech off. As I say in general it isn't a complete mess. Oh and Holger I can confirm on the locked screen notifications do indeed act as they should. 1 thing there though VO does seem to hang for around 0.5 seconds on notifications before reading them.

I installed the public beta. Only issue I have is that the doc is not showing on with VO, if I slide to page 1 of 2, the doc was after that, It does not go. I have a logitech slim folio and if I tab it will go to the doc and I can slide to message, mail and so but if I use left arro to go back, and I pass by page 1 of 2, and do right arrow it will not go back to message. VO does tend to reduce volume. Is OK so far.

Does anyone remember, I think it may have been iOS 17, when it was first released and the weather app would say something like the current temperature is 87°° Fahrenheit, or something like 31°° Celsius?
I imagine the.. o'clock o'clock.. will be patched out fairly quickly in iOS 27. 😊

Don't know if iOS 27 currently has that feature, but wouldn't it be nice to be able to label literally anything on the screen and then make it accessible with VoiceOver? It's not only unlabeled buttons but also coordinates/pixels that I'm talking about. Suppose you have a totally inaccessible app but sighted users can use it perfectly fine because the developer doesn't use native controls under the hood but the interface works like a regular app. It'd be great if I could interact with the interfaces of such apps. Think of it like this: You move your finger across the screen, and VoiceOver plays stereo or even 3-D ("spatial"/"binaural") beeps as you move along the X and Y axes. So it works kinda like Direct Touch. When you get the pitch and position of the beep right, you perform a gesture to label whatever's located exactly there, even if there's nothing underneath it that is detected and reported by VoiceOver whatsoever. Then you enter the label and also the type (e.g., whether it can be activated with a double-tap). Done! VoiceOver treats this like any other labeled element. Oh and another thing: I reported that to Apple several times but they just ignored it. One essential feature that VoiceOver lacks is more customizable progress announcements. Even things like AI image, screen, and object recognition are integrated into the OS but VoiceOver doesn't offer the level of customizability when it comes to progress announcements. All they have to do is implement something similar to what NVDA offers. And finally, we should be able to tell VoiceOver to treat any on-screen element as dynamic so that it announces any changes/updates without having to actually move focus to that element. We should be able to assign a shortcut, customize the interval, and also set a priority for dynamic updates because an app may update multiple items simultaneously.
PS: I want the admins to submit/forward these suggestions to Apple on my behalf because I'm tired of coming up with such innovative ideas and being totally ignored or even dismissed and silenced. My "more touch-typing/direct touch-like navigation and single-tap on on-screen items instead of double-tap" suggestion was one such frustrating example. It's much easier for the admins to get in direct touch with Apple, and my suggestions will benefit not only me but everyone. I can even share the feedback ID for the progress announcement thing with you. I was totally ignored even though I wrote to [email protected] and also used the Feedback Assistant to reach out to apple several times about that. I even recorded an audio sample to demonstrate how I wanted it to sound and behave. I can post a download link to that.

I do recall that Brian. Actually, if the weather app works well from the start which over the last 2 or 3 years it has been very dodgy at first I always think it looks good for iOS going forward. So, this year if the biggest issue is" O'clock" then I'm quietly confident. I just realised that I think VO is sounding like you get if you were on a phonecall with the phone away from your ear. That is what it reminds me of.

Well don't think anyone else has reported this! Scrolling no problem then for no reason Daniel popped up. Now that voice isn't even one I have in my rotor. Tried changing back and couldn't. Keeps defaulting back to his voice. Rebooted and that brought up the 2nd issue it would not accept my first passcode number. Eventually, manage to put in 5 numbers, deleted them and then it took the first number so could log back in. No change to voice though. My personal voice which is in the rotor is now Samantha at about 30% speed.

Well rebooted 3 times with no luck so seem to be stuck with this. I can't be doing with Daniel so have changed to Samantha disguised as me at 30% for now. What is funny though is that when scrolling if I say get to the clock app it says clock as expected in her voice then the time is given in Daniel's voice. Same in the rotor, ducking amount her voice then the % in his voice. Screwed me thinks. Oddly not all apps though. The Calendar apps says the date in her voice so no idea what is going on.

FOMO got me and I installed the public beta as soon as it was available. I sent feedbacks to Apple about some of the speech issues discussed here.

Is there a way on Apple VIS to track similar bug reports by others here in the beta? Or does the bug tracker only apply to the shipping versions?

I know Apple likes to have individuals reports rather than just a bunch of people copy/pasting the same thing, but what's the best way to make sure that if many of us are seeing the same bugs, that they're being reported in the best way likely to help Apple to resolve them? Strength in numbers and all that.

Unfortunately I'm not able to test the betas for the moment. Does somebody know wether the improved live recognition is available in the European Union. The new Siri will nht.

Sometimes Siri waits for a follow-up after answering a question, and sometimes she does not. For instance, during one conversation she listened for follow-ups the entire time, but on another occasion, she only listened once or twice.

I have often been having trouble performing a two finger double tap to start dictation followed by a two finger double tap to end dictation in an edit field of the messages app.

After using that procedure to dictate text into the edit field of a mesage I am often not hearing Voiceover speak what has been typed. In fact I often don't hear the ding sounds to tell me that dictation has started or stopped. swiping back and forth to see what is going on, Voiceover is silent.

often I have to switch out of the messages app band back in again to hear what has been dictated and hear Voiceover speak again in the mesages app.

Anyone else having such trouble?

--Pete

Have you tried pressing your volume up key on the side of your iPhone, after activating dictation? Could just be that the volume is turned way down.
Just an idea. 😊

Having installed the public beta of iOS 27 on my iPhone 17 Pro Max I have experienced one strange issue with the native Mail App.

Whenever I launch the Mail App my voice changes to UK Danial. I am unable to change the voice or its speed using the Rotor.

The only way I have found to resolve this issue is by going into Settings, Accessibility, VoiceOver and Activities. In here I chose Mail and explicitly set my voice and speed to my preferred values. Now the Mail App is spoken how I like it.

Malcolm

Malcolm, did you see my post above? your issue maybe related to my system wide issue. Especially as Daniel seems to be the cause. For reasons only known to apple gods as unknowningly as it started it suddenly went back to normal. Can't be doing with it if it happens again so may go back to 26.5 until a later beta.

That's what I did. I went into settings, accessibility, VoiceOver and scrolled down to the bottom where there's a reset option. You'll have to reconfigure it but it might fix your VO issues. It did for me.

Hello Enes Deniz, I agree with your suggestion very, very much. For VoiceOver, Screen Recognition hasn't been taken seriously since iOS 16, and its model hasn't been updated for several years. In the early days of this feature's launch, developers even asked for my input to tell them which apps couldn't be navigated using traditional methods, so they could use that to help train the Screen Recognition model; however, that work ended very quickly. The feature you mentioned regarding setting screen coordinates would be truly excellent if it could be implemented. In any case, I strongly agree with your point of view. Oh, and by the way, it is a great pity that in this iOS 27, at least as of now, there is still no progress in Screen Recognition. Despite the addition of Apple Intelligence, Apple seems to have completely failed to notice that this feature also needs an upgrade.

For some reason Hey Siri does not work on my iPhone 17 Pro Max here in the UK. If I use the side button to talk to Siri it works perfectly. It works from within the Siri App too, but no response when I say Siri or Hey Siri.

I cannot find where you can train Siri to your voice as you used to be able to.

hi, I just wanted to point out to the person who mentioned Siri will sometimes stop engaging with you if you want to continue that conversation, open the Siri app, select the conversation, and then you can continue it. My iPhone 17 Pro is experiencing all the audio issues others have reported, so I can only input to Siri in the app using keyboard, but VoiceOver reads the output correctly, so it's not a problem

Some may not like me for saying this, and if you don't, that's fine. I really don't care. I'm gonna be honest though. You're entitled, of corse to your own opinions, but me personally, if they've already released a public beta, yet all these issues we've been discussing in this dev seed still exist even in the public, which it sounds like they do, then this is horrible QC on Apple's part! There, I said it. Put it in your pipe and smoke it! LOL, just kidding, but in all seriousness, jokes aside, yeah... Quite frankly, they need to work on polishing out these bugs, especially the stupid Voiceover audio issues before thinking about a public beta. I tell you, if iOS 27 winds up becoming the official non-beta build, and still has the audio issues, not only will I be done with updating iOS officially or beta, I might even consider going Android, and not doing iOS again. Yeah, there. I just told the world what I think. So?

As a developer, beta tester, I was absolutely disgusting when I saw that the public beta was released based on what we were working on and had expressed our concerns about to the company. This makes us as developer testers look very bad.

As a developer, beta tester, I was absolutely disgusting when I saw that the public beta was released based on what we were working on and had expressed our concerns about to the company. This makes us as developer testers look very bad.

Since the iOS 27 public beta, I am frequently seeing that text dictated into the edit field of a message is duplicated.

Here is what I am doing:

1. To reply to a message I perform a single finger double tab to activate the edit field.
2. Then I perform a two finger double tap to start dictation.
3. I say something like " This is a test".
4. I perform a two finger double tap to stop dictation.
5. When reading the text in the mesage, it will often say
"this is a test This is a test"
Thus what I dictated was entered into the text field twice.

Other times, after I stop dictation, Voiceover no longer speaks in the messages app. If I swipe up to get to the home screen and then get back into the Messages app, however, Voiceover then works fine.

Has anyone else noticed such issues when replying to text Messages?

--Pete

iPhone SE 2022.
iOS 18.7.8.
The duplicating text while dictating is happening for me as well. It's not really new, unfortunately. 🙁