Apple Releases iOS 15.4 and iPadOS 15.4, Bringing New Emoji, Face ID While Wearing a Mask, Universal Control, and a New US Siri Voice

Another nice feature is that if you have set up automations in the shortcuts app, you now have the option to disable notifications when run. I'm personally taking advantage of this so that I don't get notifications come up when my automations run to speak changes in the charge state that i've set up. This means that my automations will still automatically run, I just don't need notifications to tell me that they have run from the shortcuts app. You have to set this setting for each automation you want to change.

What a disappointment! I have a brand-new 13 Mini and I won't be able to unlock my phone with a mask since I can't look at the phone. What a waste!

For the first time, in a long time, I got all 3 of my activity rings today, thanks to Apple fitness+, and its new audio hints feature for voiceover users.
I think it’s really cool, that that feature enables itself, automatically, if you’re using voiceover.

well,
I am totally blind and set it up.
but, when I wearing a mask
it seems does not work in myh end as well.
I am using IPhone 12

Overall, I quite like the new Siri voice. It’s not as expressive as I would like, but the pitch and resonance are pleasing. It’s firmly androgynous, featuring some feminine and masculine qualities. It sounds a bit nasal, and has some headspace like you were typically here on a woman. It also has some chest resonance and buzzyness like you were would on a man. If I had to guess, I would say that it was probably done by somebody either transfeminine or trans non-binary.

I like the new siri voice as well.

I am using face ID with a mask and I'm having no problems at all. I've been testing this feature throughout the beta cycle and I'm very happy with it. I'm using an iPhone 12 pro and I'm totally blind. You can use the unlock with a mask feature even if you don't have face ID requires attention on. Although I recommend having requires attention turned on if possible because it is more secure.

well, when I am wearing a mask
and trying to unlock my phone.
my phone seems can not detect anything.
and locked again.

@Earle
do you wear glasses?

Hi,
I wear glasses, then have a double prescription.
As part of the Face ID set up, you have the option of adding classes.
I could not get this to work, so called Apple Accessability.
They said that my phone probably can’t see the portion of my face that it needs to, in order to make this feature work properly, and put in some feedback on my behalf.
Also, voiceover is not very helpful in that area. It only tells you when your face is out of you.

So, I had a quick play with my macbook air and ipad and, with trackpad commander on and sweeping towards the iPad, it does seem to spill over and have some control. Now, from my understanding, voiceover control on iPad is spotty at best, so maybe it is acting correctly. Unfortunately I couldn't find any way of using the macbook's keyboard to control the iPad.

I'm wondering if it only applies to text fields. I'll have to do some more testing, but I have also emailed apple accessibility to ask them about it. It seems silly that there isn't a shortcut to throw keyboard control back and forth from a handoff device, even if we can't use pointer devices.

I don't wear glasses so I can't comment on face ID with a mask and glasses. I can only say I'm using this feature successfully as a totally blind person. I'm glad Apple added this in 15.4.

Hi! I updated my iPhone SE 2020 to IOS 15.4 a few hours ago, and I've already noticed two improvements since then. Notifications no longer repeat themselves: before today's update I'd have VoiceOver saying "now" or "X minutes ago" before it spoke the notification for the first time, and the exact time of the notification the second time. Also, since I got IOS 15, my rotor had an annoying habit of randomly jumping out of Braille Screen Input without me turning it when I was using that: as far as I can tell from using BSI today, that doesn't happen any more, I can braille on the screen without having to turn the rotor from time to time to get back into BSI.

Hi All.

I was surprised to stumble onto an Apple support article claiming we can go backwards to a previous MacOS whenever we choose. the page gives instructions and links to a variety of prior operating systems, going back quite a ways. Smile. Here's the link:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683

Anyway, I imagine there are a few people who regret they upgraded to Monterey. The link is for you.

Joy!

Bruce

Panning issue still exists. Wondering what Apple is doing!

The long-standing problem of VO focus unreliably jumping from one element to other remains. This problem appears mainly on the homescreen where, regardless of which app ikon you touched before opening an app, the focus jumps to the first item when one comes back to the homescreen.

Also, the focus is extremely unreliable on recent calls tab in the native phone app, to the extent that most of thetime VO interacts with a different item than the one one is trying to interact with, resulting in accidental calls.

I'm finding that the System tables give me less issues with panning than Liblouis. I wonder if others also have noticed the same thing?

Tell you what, fooks, I'm guessing I'm the only one with this issue because I've now flagged it twice elsewhere and nobody has said they have the same thing. So I'm flagging it again as it has carried over: UK Siri female voice is still swearing at me! Or rather, its expletives are being bleeped out. Honestly, it's like listening to a well-spoken female Gordon Ramsay! i have worked out that the bleep kicks in every time she encounters the letter V followed by a vowell. So it's v-bleep-oiceover, nav-bleep-igation, the Police and criminal Ev-bleep-idence Act 1984, you get the idea. It seems to happen ev-bleep-ery time this combo of letters is encountered and it's bleepin' annoying! The best that can be said is it's consistent. Can anyone explain what's going on? I've deleted and redownloaded in order to try and recov-bleep-er normal behav-bleep-iour but nothing works. I give-bleep up - yes, it does occur at the end of words too, which means words like give, have, I've are off the menu and if I worked in the financial services sector specialising in derivitives I'd be in a right old state! Am I really the only one experiencing this? Using an iPhone 13 and now running 15.4 with no change.

Still reading? Well, on panning I do tend to find the system tables give me far less trouble. Generally, in fact, I think the system table (at least with UEB) works better than Liblouis. I occasionally switch to Liblouis as for some reason it is better at translating certain things like fractions, but I've encountered a fair share of translation problems with Liblouis when I've tried it for general use whereas the system table is pretty nailed on accurate. I have UEB Liblouis and UEB system available and changing on the fly is very easy - just a two-finger flick up when you're in braille screen input in case folk have forgotten.

With the update to iOS 15.4, VoiceOver now says that buttons and other things are images as well as telling you what the button is. This is excesively talkative given that I have turned off all of the description and text recognition functions. Is anyone else noticing this problem?

So jsut after I said the system table worked better I'm noticing some very odd translation issues. For example, Voiceover crashes every time I type the sign that indicates a change from block capitals back to lower case (dot 6, dot 3) as in words like MPs or NCOs. it also seems to have a problem translating the word 'just' as in J on its own. Liblouis no such problems.

Well still get notification repeating twice. Now it says. Notification, notification and whatever it is be it message or news. Nuts.

In iOS 14, whenever I muted phone and screen was lock, VO did not speak notification. Now iOS 15.4 does speaks. But! This is a major pain for me.

This feature doesn't work for me either. I set it up, but when I tried to unlock while wearing a mask, literally nothing happened. It didn't even try or give me an error or anything. I tried enabling attention, just to see if it would help, but no luck. Not sure it matters, but apart from light perception, I'm totally blind, and my "good" eye is constantly rotating; I have absolutely no control of its movement. So, while I'm disappointed that I can't use face ID with a mask, I'm choosing to be thankful for the fact that this update fixed the double reading of notifications. That made updating more than worthwhile in my book.

I've never experienced this bleeping voice thing, but it definitely sounds like it would be annoying. The voice is very pleasant, but due to some annoying pronunciation quirks that not even the pronunciation dictionary can fix, I can't use the voice. They'd have to make some major, major improvements before I'd ever switch away from using good old Alex for VO. As for siri, I've become partial to the Irish female voice. Have you contacted Apple accessibility team about the bleeping thing? That sounds like something that urgently needs to be fixed, and I can't imagine how the voice made it through testing with such a serious glitch.

One little blip and nothing more. I thought the scan was happening, but since Voiceover didn't say anything, that obviously wasn't the case.

Hi, I'm waiting on a new phone and still using the iPhone 6s plus and was curious if anyone on here still has a 6s plus and can share how well ios 15.4.1 works on the 6s plus? I'm still on the latest ios 14 and not sure if I should update it...
Thank you