Hi all,
I recently upgraded from an iPhone 13 Pro to a 16E. Since the change of device, I'm having a strange issue where the two-finger swipe left while using Braille Screen Input will delete multiple words rather than just the one word or, if you were half way through typing a word, deleting the dots you had just entered.
For example, lets say I type "Hello, this is just a test". Previously, a two-finger swipe left at the end of that sentence would delete the word "test", however I just tried this in Notes and it deleted "just a test". Sometimes it deletes two or three words at a time, sometimes it deletes the whole text.
I restored from backup and have verified that all my settings are exactly the same, including the two-finger swipe left gesture in the VoiceOver commands settings. The only new thing that I can think of is Apple Intelligence, but I tried disabling that and the issue remained.
Anyone else experienced this?
iPhone 16E running iOS 18.5. No betas installed, and yes I tried the obvious (restarting VoiceOver, rebooting the phone etc).
Comments
Screen Protector?
I am a daily user of Braille Screen Input and did not encounter this issue during my almost 6 weeks of using the iPhone 16e for review. The only thing I can think of, do you have a screen protector on the device? I am guessing no, but thought I would ask as screen protectors can cause issues with VoiceOver touch sensitivity in my experience.
Re: Deleting words
Swiping left with one finger deletes characters.
Swiping left with two fingers deletes words.
Any chance you're swiping left with two fingers? 😅
My suggestions
I’m not sure if you have a screen protector, but as Michael mentioned earlier, it could affect the sensitivity of your screen. If you do have one, you might want to try removing it. Also, I think it might help to calibrate your Braille screen input. I’ve found that after calibrating it, it works better. I don’t have this issue, and I use Braille screen input all the time. Hope this helps!
I've been experiencing this for about a year now.
Not long ago, I wrote here about this issue. Only one person said they had the same problem as me. So it looks like this issue is quite rare. It has nothing to do with artificial intelligence, since it's not supported in my country anyway.
But I’ve discovered something really interesting. This problem only happens when the orientation is vertical. When the phone is in landscape mode, though, characters delete properly. So if you want to get rid of the bug, set your phone so that VoiceOver recognizes the orientation as horizontal. Then you should be able to delete characters normally, just like before.
Unfortunately, on Facebook, you can’t change the orientation because the app doesn’t support it, which means there’s no chance for braille to work properly there.
I reported the issue to Apple. They tried to do something, I even got a reply from them a couple of times, but so far, they haven’t been able to fix it.
I’m hoping that once I reset the screen reader settings in iOS 26, everything will go back to normal.
We’ll see!
Cheers 😁
Thanks All
Thanks for your comments everyone. To those who asked, I don't have a screen protector on this phone and didn't have one on my previous device either.
As I've been using this phone more, I've noticed other gestures that behave strangely. For example, if I go to the app switcher and use the 3-finger swipe up to close an app, when I then do the usual gesture to go back to the home screen, I will feel the haptics as usual and be returned to the home screen, but another two or three apps in my app switcher will also be closed very quickly one after another. It's as though it is somehow interpreting certain gestures as being performed multiple times, but in this case it is also recognising the gesture I intended to make.
I don't know if this phone is simply more sensitive than my 13 Pro or if I have some kind of fault with the display/touch sensor, but it's certainly something I will be keeping an eye on for the next few days.
Interestingly though, regarding the comment from @Ines above, I don't seem to experience multiple words being deleted if I hold my phone with the screen facing upwards rather than in Screen Away mode, which is normally how I use Braille Screen input. It doesn't matter what orientation VoiceOver thinks it's in (I have it locked in Screen Away mode), but if the screen is pointing upwards then only one word at a time is deleted as expected.
Overall, it's a very strange issue and there's every possibility that it could be device related.