iOS/iPadOS 27 Beta 6 Megathread

The size was just above 2 gigabytes on my 17 Pro Max, so I'm not expecting any major changes, even when it comes to bugfixes, but we'll see. I'll report back my findings.

Mine came in at about 916.2 MB on my iPhone 15, so definitely small indeed.
Either the "VoiceOver lacking low end" has finally been fixed, or it has been improved. Alex definitely sounds a lot fuller.

Did the bugs on 27 regarding notifications not clearing are history?

I'm not sure if I've had this bug before or not, as I am not one that is good at clearing notifications. But when I clicked clear, then another click to confirm, it emptied my notification center, leaving the most recent one visible.

Bug. It is in beta 5 or public 3 beta. Have it on my iPad 9. Nuts.

Nothing new there, and I didn't download the beta until last weekend.

Am I correct in assuming that spelling suggestions no longer work in BSI?
I disabled autocorrection, and the commands section still shows previous and next suggestions but they aren't working for me.

I've seen these gestures in commands settings, but whenever I try using them I end up activating single handed mode in braille screen input and have not found a way to disable that gesture, apart from turning off activation gestures entirely which I don't want to do since I use them with two handed mode.
Just some findings I have and am wondering if anyone has any suggestions on what to try for these to behave correctly.

Voiceover, Alex, still sounds bad. I just went from vanilla 26 to 27 dev beta and the contrast is obvious.

Image description still refuses to describe 'sensitive content'.

Subjects in images are still not gendered.

Apple will not change. Privacy issues. I think in iPhone pro 18 and up third party be able to use the camera. I think 9to5 mention it. I might be wrong.

Unfortunately the BSI spelling suggestions no longer work correctly since beta 4 or so. The only way is for you to enable autocorrection, and if you don't want the word autocorrected, you swipe down with one finger after space.

I'm not sure how that works? I know they don't want to take actual photos on the new airpods with cameras, rather it will all be secured inside apple AI. Not sure how that translates to sensitivity and gendre. The example was, checking out photos on X (grim place), said it wouldn't describe an image... Which of course interested me more, and frustrated me with an artificial barrier (think it was a lady with her leg out... not sure though) and the gendre thing, looking at pictures of my niece and nephew it just said children, meaning I couldn't easily tell them apart. They have gendres, they dress as a boy and a girl... I'm not sure how turning off that distinction is useful to anyone.

No need to turn it off, if I pay for the iphone, I should be able to look at whatever photos I want, and have them described, if nobody else has the barriers, why should we

It says writing tools, but it doesn't look like it used to and I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even get out of the note Icreated because it was all letters. At least the old way made sense. Missed calls in the phone app is still broken. It still shows the entire call history. I'm not sure what this version is all about if nothing works.

Hi. Because we live in a modern culture where gender is not considered relevant anymore, image descriptions won't include the gender of the subjects that's also true for me in the Google world using Gemini image descriptions

If you ask for the gendre in a follow up question it does say, it just doesn't offer it up on first description, which is a bit odd. I noticed that you can set a default question for live description, it would be nice if we could specify how images are described to us rather than this rather vanilla version which seems terrified of making any judgement at all.

I guess it will do. It's helpful to go through all my photos at least and label them all, a person with brown hair and a short beard... I can only assume, that's me.

JAWS does do so without no issues. If for some reason you get a picture of someone you are texting and she sent you a pic of her wearing a bikini or something similar, it does describe and you can ask questions. Do the others app do so?

With both this beta (iOS27 beta 6) as well as previous betas, I have been having trouble answering phone calls.

When the locked phone rings, I perform a two finger double tap to answer the call. More often than not, the call is not answered or I don't hear anything. I assume this is till the gesture to answer calls from the locked screen?

Overall this beta is working very well, except for its main function of being a phone since I can't confidently answer incoming phone calls!

Is there some magic here or something I'm missing?

Thanks.

--Pete

Sucks, and I don't know if it's this website but dictation is terrible! Maybe it's just my iPhone 17 which has been quite a disappointment for me!

I'd like to assume I'm receiving lots of such photographs but just am unaware... No, other LLM doesn't have too much of a problem with it though there are still some rails. The difference is you can argue our point, blind, would like to know what a sighted person could see, describe it to me as a best friend, blah blah blah...

And, I know it's all a bit 'ick. But if we're on dating sights and apps, we might want to know what someone looks like. This assumption that, just because we can't see it doesn't matter, is rubbish. Why shouldn't it matter? Of course, it's not everything that matters, far from it, but we're looking for equality in all experiences.

I was chatting with a friend and realized that I couldn't lock my screen, neither could I use the home gesture to get into another app. Has this happened to anybody else?

Dictation is absolutely awful. Like, I thought it was bad with iOS 26 but yikes. It's really bad, I truly don't know how it comes up with half the things it says.

Apple wants you to get the iPhone that will let use the new dictation.

Tey made it worse for 80% of people and improved it for the rest. Classic Apple, but in all seriousness dictation is absolutely amazing if you have the device to power the new model.

I’m still on iOS 18, but I’ll have to update when iOS 27 drops because the image descriptions work great. Has anyone else noticed an annoying delay/audio lag when using AirPods with VoiceOver? I use the AirPods Pro 2, and on the previous version, the delay was basically unnoticeable, but it’s much worse now.

I also notice a delay when using the on-screen keyboard, where VoiceOver takes a moment to say the letter under my finger. There’s also a noticeable delay when switching between voices using the voices rotor. This is especially annoying for users like me who speak and read in many languages.

Which device are you using? No lag on my end.

I have noticed it feels quite sluggish. I installed on monday evening and it has finished indexing.

I've turned off the new siri, it's very sluggish indeed and seems to stay on the screen. Asking it to search for specific apps tends to take ages and then it will just tell me about the app its found. Maybe I'm asking wrong, maybe I should be asking, find x on the app store, but, meh...

Yes, in iOS 27 it seems to take Siri a lot longer to simply open an app than it did in iOS 26. Sometimes it will take a long time to open the app, then the app opens, then Siri announces "Sorry, I've encountered a problem". Who knows what the problem was because the app did eventually open.

And yes, it is very annoying that Siri stays open at the top of the screen. This actually hides information in the status bar like the time. thus, if you ask Siri what time it is with the Siri dialog open at the top of the screen, Siri will see the last time announcement in the Siri UI and not the status bar. thus it announces the old time from the last time you asked for the time.

Another problem with the Siri UI being caught at the top of the screen is how one has to dismiss it. Yes, it is easy to do by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. Unfortunately, when the iPhone is being held in place on my treadmills stand for holding a phone, the bottom edge of the display is under part of the holding mechanism. thus there is no way I can swipe up from the bottom of the screen.

The result is, that when using my treadmill with my Airpods, if I ask Siri for the time once, it remains being the same time for the rest of my workout when I ask 'Siri to see how long I've been exercising!!

Hope something can be done about that sticky Siri dialog. After all, if I wanted to open the Siri app I know how to do that!

--Pete

Whatever command you use for Siri, Siri or hey Siri, depending upon what device you’re using, you can say goodbye afterwards, and that will clear the top of the screen