Hi,
I've been trying my hand at a bit of vibe coding. it's pretty good fun. I've am having a problem with getting my iPhone into developer mode though. I read this problem was noted elsewhere, but I didn't understand the response.
I can switch it into developer mode, but when my phone restarts there is no audio or even haptic feedback. I know it's on as it has appeared in the side bar of finder.
In the other post, the response said something about having a paid developer account but, surely you don't have to have a paid developer account for mucking about. I understand there are limitations of what the free account will do, but I can't find any evidence that this is something that is precluded.
I'm on IOS 18.6 on an Phone 15 pro.
Hopefully more people will get into this. i'll not say it's super easy, but it's pretty impressive. Just think of all the cool apps we can create!
Comments
developer mode with Voiceover broken
In the past worked but they broke it with iOS 26 and as it seems with iOS 18.6. In 18.5 it still worked. Ask someone to turn it on for you.
Accessibility issues with developer mode
I was probably the one who mentioned potential issues with developer mode and the free tier, because I distinctively recall replying to a thread on this exact subject some time ago and those problems were real at least at some point. From what I recall, the problem when the free tier was introduced was that you can't really access the Certificates, Identities, and Profiles section of the developer portal in that tier, and at least back then that was preventing devices from provisioning themselves. This has likely been fixed since that happened a long time ago, and the problem you are experience is likely not related to that, but I might know what you're talking about.
When the first iOS 26 developer beta came out, I updated my iPad to it to check out whether it would work with my USB endoscopic camera, because I have plans to develop an accessibility solution taking advantage of that camera and a remote multi-modal AI model running on my own computer at home to discreetly assist me with problems potentially requiring vision when I'm away from home, however I experienced a problem very similar to your description where the developer mode prompt was preventing VoiceOver from running so I couldn't interact with it. The only reason why I even know that the prompt was being displayed is because I used Seeing AI on my iPhone to read my iPad screen, and since Seeing AI can't help me find the right location to tap in order to enable developer mode and dismiss the prompt, my iPad was essentially soft-bricked for me and I had to restore it back to iOS 18 from a backup copy that I prudently made to one of my Macs before trying the beta.
At the time I just dismissed the aforementioned accessibility problem as a beta issue, but your experience might indicate that it's also present on iOS 18 as well.
Screen after turning on develop mode is inaccessible.
Hey João. Sorry to be the bringer of bad news, but after you turn on developer mode and press restart, the screen that pops up is inaccessible with VoiceOver and if you push the home/side button three times to turn it on with the shortcut, the pop-up will disappear completely. Unfortunately you will need sighted assistance to complete the process. I've reported the bug to Apple so hopefully it will be fixed soon. Cheers!
Not news, just bad
That's not really news to me, as you'll notice that I reached exactly that conclusion if you read my comment. What is news to me is that it also affects iOS 18, which was never a problem to me since I've been running iOS with developer mode enable on all my devices ever since that toggle was introduced.