iOS/iPadOS

When composing an email, including replying to an email, VoiceOver focus does not behave as expected on the email body field.
Instead of speaking the full content of the filed, and allowing you to double tap to send the cursor to the start or end, it speaks a seemingly random line of text from what you’ve typed, and cursor movement does not work.

Specifically, the multitasking controls button is accessed in the status bar. However once selected, VoiceOver does not indicate that the menu is open, and you cannot simply swipe to enter the open menu. Instead you need to move off the status bar, and return to it to find the controls.

When using a language that has accented characters (such as French, Spanish or German), it is not possible to type these characters with the onscreen keyboard if you are using the Touch Typing mode.

In versions of iOS prior to 11.0, you held your finger briefly on a character, until a pop-up appeared on screen showing any available alternate variants of the character. You would then slide your finger to the one that you desired. When you then lifted your finger, that variant of the character would be typed.

This is currently not working under iOS 11.0.x.

It is not possible to mark certain actions as favorites in the system share sheet due to the "Insert" button and checkbox being interpreted as one element.

Specifically, when focusing on an action in the share sheet that can be enabled/disabled via a checkbox, VoiceOver announces the checkbox state and "Insert" as parts of a single UI element rather than separately. Double tapping toggles the checkbox but does not allow inserting the action as a favorite.

When attempting to use “Hey Siri” when your device is locked, you will typically find that the device will wake but there will be no indication that Siri has been activated and any command will not be actioned or receive a response.

When using the keyboard to delete text in a text field, as each character is deleted the audible and haptic feedback provided to VoiceOver users is that which normally indicates that you have reached the start of the text field and that no further text is available to delete (or that you have reached a boundary when swiping to move VoiceOver focus through screen elements).

This behaviour does not appear to be present in all text fields. One example of where it is present is the address bar in Safari.

When bluetooth is enabled, but no device connected, the bluetooth icon in the Status Bar reports via VoiceOver feedback “Bluetooth Connected”.

In this scenario, the feedback provided by VoiceOver would preferably be “Bluetooth On”, as there is a distinction between having bluetooth enabled and having bluetooth devices connected.

In iOS versions prior to iOS 13.0, there would be an audible tone played when your device had been successfully unlocked using Face ID. This confirmation had specific value for those who could not see the visual changes that appear on the device. As of iOS 13.0, this tone is no longer present.

On occasion, you may find that VoiceOver does not automatically speak the time when using the side or power button to wake your device; when this occurs, you will instead hear the "Item Activated" sound.

The ‘New Window’ UI element on the App Expose (Show All Windows) screen on iPadOS is missing a VoiceOver label to indicate that it is indeed a button to create a new instance of the selected app.

When reading articles in the native News app, swiping to move VoiceOver focus or using the 'Read All' gesture is unreliable and inconsistent. You will commonly find that VoiceOver focus will either skip significant amounts of the article or get 'stuck' at a point and refuse to move beyond this.

It appears that some elements in an article are particularly likely to cause problems, such as embedded tweets.

When both VoiceOver and Zoom are enabled, the behaviour of multitouch gestures (typically those which have you use 3 or 4 fingers) is inconsistent and unreliable.

The sort button on the Library subpages in the native Music app - such as ‘playlists’ and ‘songs’ - lacks a clear VoiceOver label, making it difficult for VoiceOver users to understand its purpose.

The current VoiceOver label "line.3.horizontal.decrease" does not properly convey that this button allows changing the sort order. It should be updated to a more meaningful label like "Sort" or "Change Sort Order".

Using the VoiceOver rotor to navigate by Headings on the ‘For You’ tab of the native News App is inconsistent and unreliable.

When on the "For You" tab of the native Music app, navigating by swiping or heading is unreliable and inconsistent. In both cases you are likely to find that VoiceOver focus will skip much of what is on this screen.

The subscription management interface in the App Store was recently changed. Unfortunately, these changes have introduced issues for VoiceOver users that now make navigation of this screen inconsistent and unreliable.

Typically you will find that on occasions VoiceOver focus will spontaneously jump to random places when attempting to navigate the screen by flicking. Additionally, movement of focus is often unreliable in that some UI elements may be skipped or repeated.

When writing a draft email, flicking left past the "cancel" button will not move you to the "minimize draft" button (which is visually located directly below the status bar). Similarly, touching the minimize button will focus on it, but you cannot then flick right to get to the rest of the page. This is doubly problematic as the button is small, so many users may not realize it is even there since they cannot flick to it and touch exploration can easily miss it.

When composing a new message in the native Mail app, if you use the VoiceOver Rotor to navigate the message field by line there is no audible feedback as focus moves between lines.

When moving an app out of a folder using the drag method, VoiceOver does not play the sound to indicate that the folder has been closed.

When editing the list of mailboxes/folders to be displayed in the native Mail App, VoiceOver does not announce their current selection status.