I am oh so tired of the issue with unstable voiceOVer focus on iOS and wondering if anyone has had success fixing it by doing a complete reset of their iPhone and clean setup.
In particular, I am tired of VoiceOver focus spontaneously jumping to a different location on the screen in that split second right before I double tap. Sometimes I catch it and stop myself from tapping, but other times I'm not quick enough and end up activating the wrong button, link, or app control entirely.
Looking back through my bug reports to Apple, I've been dealing with this for at least 4 years. I have zero confidence Apple is actively working on a fix. At this point my only hope is that it gets resolved by happenstance when they make some other change.
I know from reading posts here and elsewhere that plenty of people experience this same issue. But I've also noticed some users say they encounter it much less frequently, and others claim they never see it at all.
In my case, this problem has followed me across at least 3 different iPhones where I've transferred settings and apps from my previous iPhone. It's also survived multiple resets of iOS settings.
I'm now wondering if doing a full reset to factory settings and setting up the phone as completely new (not from backup) might actually resolve it. But I'm really reluctant to go down this path because it would be such a massive time investment and hassle to get everything set up again.
Has anyone here tried this approach? Did it work for you? I'd really appreciate hearing about your experiences before I decide whether to take the plunge myself.
Comments
Haven’t had this issue, but have a suggestion.
One thing that I don’t know if a lot of people know, is when you are a mid tap, and you want to not tap on the current location, you can swipe right where you normally would do another tap.
For example, if I double tap, and then decide I want to Swipe to the right, I would swipe or perform the other gesture where I would have done another tap. You would have to do this within the double tap timeout set in VoiceOver settings. If you do it right, VoiceOver will forget about the double tap, and realize that you swiped to the right or did another gesture. It also works if you want to double tap with three fingers, but accidentally did too fingers. On the second tap which would be with two fingers, do three instead and it would recognize as a three finger double tap. This does not work the other way around, where tapping once with three fingers and tapping once with two fingers in the double tap timeout window would do a two finger double tap.
Thought I would throw this out there too hopefully prevent accidental taps on the wrong item.
The double tap timeout can be adjusted from 0.2 seconds all the way through I believe 0.5 seconds in voiceovers main settings.
no
a reset hasn't fixt this issue for me, it's just gotten way worce since i got my hable one but think that mightt be cause voiceover doesn't know how to work well with keyboards or something
Nor me
No, this issue has been following me around for many years too. When I get a new phone, I almost always set it up as new. I also did a full settings reset about a year ago. And still I have this issue.
I generally find iOS pretty good and stable, but this bug is one that I am utterly sick and tired of.
Dave
this bug makes me hate my iPhone
Tell me what sacrifice is necessary to the gods in order to fix this and I will comply. I hate this bug so much and it has been a problem for several generations of iPhone. I am literally considering moving to android over it
Re: Nor me
Thanks Dave, I appreciate you sharing your experience. You've saved me the frustration of performing a clean reinstall to only find the issue still present.
Did I mention how tired I am of this issue! 😡
Jumping focus ended when I upgraded to IOS 18
For a couple years I hated focused jumping all over the place. Drove me nuts. As stated in the subject line, however, the problem ended (meaning virtually disappeared) when I upgraded to IOS 18 on my iPhone 15 pro.
Nope
This is the issue that's causing me to seriously consider a switch to Android. It's been with me for 2 or 3 years now, I can't remember which. I always set up my phones as new in the hopes the bug will go away, but it never does.
Split tap
iOS 18, for me, is where this issue really took route. I am on an older model iPhone, iPhone SE 2022, and for the most part the focus issue was not so bad. When iOS 18 was installed, however, I really started noticing it. I have adapted to using split tap in place of double tapping on things. For those who are not familiar with that term, split tap is where you hold an item with one finger and touch the screen with another finger to activate it. This often negates the loss of focus issue that we are all experiencing.
On a separate note, I am right there with Brooke, seriously considering jumping ship at this point…
HTH.
Flicking through articles in News app
I particularly notice focus jumping to the top of a page when flicking through articles in the Apple News app.
I don't think I noticed this before the iOS 18 releases, but now that I'm using iOS 18.5, the problem seems to be worse.
This generally happens when I open a heading in the News app such as "Science" and am flicking through the articles of that section in the list of articles. I will flick several times in a row and then, all of a sudden, the page seems to refresh and I'm at the top of the list again and have to find where I was all over again.
Yes, very frustrating. Hopefully this can be resolved, but since it isn't 100% reproducible, I'm doubtful that anything can or will be done about it.
--Pete
live regions
I'm not seeing this. Have you tried turning off live region announcements in the rotor in the news app?
Feedback reports are no help
Back in the iOS 18 beta, I opened a feedback issue on this problem and described examples of it in great detail. Apple responded to the bug report with, "a fix is planned for a future release." But we're at 18.5 and the behavior is unchanged.
The issue isn't reproducible, but that doesn't necessarily mean it can't be tracked down and fixed. If some code change introduced this behavior, then another code change can eliminate it.
C'mon Apple.
It's terrible!
Voiceover jumps around so fast! I have an iPhone 16. Any suggestions would be great!
Clock, just as one example
Every time I open the native iOS Clock app, focus is in a different place. It might be the first control at the top of the screen. It might be the element that had focus last time I used it. Or it might be on some other random element, or even in the menu bar. It seems to be determined by the direction of the wind or phase of the moon. I know this isn't the same as the focus jumping around issue, but I'll bet US$20 they're related. All it takes is for one Apple engineer who is experiencing a similar problem to take a couple of hours to track it down and put in a fix.
Agreed with Paul
I wish I could remember when the focus issue started. I feel like it was either iOS 15 or 16. I beta tested whatever version it was and submitted feedback for several cycles. I think the last time I did was iOS 17, and I got the same response, that a fix would be forthcoming. That was over a year ago. If focus was like this for sighted people, it would have been fixed. So I've lost a lot of my faith in Apple and only stay because I've been too nervous so far to make the switch. That, plus the fact I've invested a lot in the way of apps and ringtones. I'm hoping eventually, that won't be enough to keep me with Apple.
Focus lost
I feel that, besides, the focus automatically jumping and thus losing one's place, the other issue with focus when using Voiceover is that there is another focus issue that I find frustrating.
often when opening/moving to a new dialog or opening/moving to another app and then moving back again, focus rarely goes back to where it was before one opened or moved to the new dialog or app.
For a sighted person this may not be such an issue because they can readily pick up and start reading from where they were or just place their finger on an element to activate it. Using Voiceover, however, if focus winds up in some random place, the Voiceover user has to do a lot of flicking around to pick up where they left off.
Maybe I've been spoiled by the experience of using Windows with a screen reader. When I move to a new dialog or app and then back again, or if I move to a new web page and close it or go back to the original web page, focus is always in the place where I left off. No hunting around to find out where I left off.
One situation that I find particularly frustrating is when I have my iPhone unlocked and I'm exercising on my treadmill. I will be playing some music and ask Siri to rewind or skip a song. Siri obiently obediantly does what I ask, but then after the Siri dialog that opens eventually closes when I say OK or thanks, focus is suddenly in the status bar on the time, even if focus was originally on the Play button before my request to Siri. the impact of this is that now Voiceover interrupts what I am listening to every time that the minute advances. If focus would just go back to the Play button from whence it started, this wouldn't be a problem.
In summary, it would be nice if, not only could the random jumping around of the focus be addressed, but also if the focus could be remembered in such situations.
--Pete