Release candidates are out!

For iPad I am getting it now. Last time I checked for phone not yet. Will check tonight and morning for watch. Next week more likely with public version the AirPod pro 2 firmware will be out.

personal voice preation is broken; it keeps saying "check your internet connection" and it isn't a 10 minute process, still states 150 phrases need to be read?

odd ....

Hi,

the update has been installed on mac, now waiting for phone to update.

Hi,

I just checked on my end, and personal voice seems fine. It says 10 phrases on my end. So I am not sure if it either has to do with the update or something else.

i installed it on my iPad 9 and was almost out of battery so i am charging it now and will play later, when i was watching the apple event today voiceover got stuck in the PIP controls so had to use explore by touch to find the close button when the event was over

it really sucks that this bug is still around, it's been around for a wile

I have no personal voices on my iPhone so I don’t quite know know what’s going on. I’m not going to record 150 phrases if it’s supposed to be 10 and when it says I need to download 1.32 GB for something you can’t find my Internet, even though I’m connected very strange.

Did you do a restart? Sometimes that helps. Ask Siri to restart device.

Curious, because braille is my main use case with apple products. What are everyone's experiences with braille? Any strange behavior? I remember the enter key not working in an earlier beta, and you could no longer use braille to enter your passcode.

does call screening for unknown numbers work on non 15 pro and up phones?

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to figure out how the VoiceOver shortcut Y works – the one that supposedly launches braille keyboard input. From what I understood, it should allow you to type braille directly using your Mac keyboard, but I can’t seem to get it to work.

Has anyone managed to use this feature successfully? Am I misunderstanding how it’s supposed to function?

Thanks in advance for any tips!

Voiceover is getting stuck a lot, it got stuck on the setup screen twice and is still getting stuck in the pip controls

Now that the new release candidates are available, will we be getting any new voices for voiceover? That’s my favorite part of any new operating system. I figured because I am totally blind and have been since birth, the voices are my screen so I always like to go into the settings and speech and play. If we don’t have any new voices, that’s totally OK and understandable, but I would like some. As far as what we should have, I am totally OK with the vocalizer voices. Those are the ones that are going to be responsive for us navigating our devices. This is why those are still being made available to us. If not, then I will just stick with my usual voices that I have now. I have two iPhones. I have the base model pink iPhone 15 and 512 gigs and I am using Karen premium on that as well as British Voice one for Siri. My second phone is my product red iPhone SE third generation which I kept as an iPod. For that I am using Kait enhance for voiceover and I am using British voice three for Siri. Those are the voices that are still available for iOS 26th and I will stick with those voices. If we get some new ones and I end up liking them more, but it was currently available. I may switch to some of them. However, I actually named my devices from the Voice of these. So my iPhone 15‘s name is actually Karen. My iPhone SE’s name is actually kicked. I even typed it in to the text instead of dictating it because then I could spell it the way that the voice kit name spells it. If I were to dictate a different spelling. I only know this because I deleted character by character and realized it wasn’t the same spelling that I wanted. Kind of interesting. I don’t do anybody testing because I need my devices to work. I think everybody is incredibly brave for testing. Especially for people who are users. I am a voice control user and those accessibility features are essential to me so my devices need to work, which is why I am unable to be a test. I have CP so I have to use dictation in order to make any comments on this website. I think some people on here may have read that, but I just wanted to reiterate, reiterate, that again he any mistakes because I am not able to edit with the rotor. I’m trying to make this as clear as possible. I love this website and I’m so glad to be back on here after being away for a little while.

Hi, as the previous poster has said, there is now new india voices. Personally I have not tried them myself as my devices set to US English.

So, there is a weird bug currently with iOS 18.x. It has to do with reduced transparency. It goes like this.
1. Go to Settings, Accessibility, Display & Text Size, Reduced Transparency. Make sure it's off.
2. Go to your home screen, and open a couple of apps, it makes absolutely no difference which apps, just make sure at least two of them are open. Once opened, return to your home screen.
3. Do your app switcher gesture, and swipe left or right between your open apps. When you get to the end of each side, you should hear the sound indicating you're at the end. This is all well and good.
4. Repeat steps 1 and 2, this time turning Reduce Transparency on.
5. With a few apps opened, do your home gesture again, and then activate app switcher. Swipe to the right, and you will eventually hear the sound meaning you're at the end of your list of apps. However, swipe to the left, and after you get to that last app, instead of hearing the sound telling you you're at the end, VoiceOver focus will jump to the last item you have in your dock, and will continue reading Past the dock and throughout all of the app icons you have on your home screen.

This is not necessarily a big issue, but it has been around as far as I can tell, since iOS 18 was first launched.

My question is, have any of you noticed this in iOS 26?

Thanks in advance. 🙂

Edited for typos.

If you use VMWare Fusion, you might want to hold off on updating to MacOS 26. This would need braver people to test, but upgrading to Tahoe appears to have left my virtual machine unable to start. Fusion itself runs, it just refuses to start the virtual machine. I uninstalled and reinstalled just in case, but with the same result.

I asked this question ages and ages ago in the beta cycle, once or twice - can't remember whether it was once or twice. It clearly didn't peak much interest, which is fine, but let's have another go: does personal voice still default to US English? it does make a difference to how it processes certain vowel and consonant sounds when putting together one's personal voice. I could tell when listening to myself.

Just checked and we still only appear to have 1 heading of US English.

given up on personal voice, it still acting as though i need to record the 150 phrases. not a clue what's happened, even after a restart i can't get the one-handed braille screen input mode to work either double tapping and holding with 3 fingers just calibrates.

I have found a new Indian voice called Amman, but it’s not high premium just standard at my end anyway and a voice called Tara

Noticed that the sound is low. How do I bring up to 100%? Thanks. PS. 16 pro max.

Hello. I was thinking of installing the RC on my primary iPhone 15 base modle and having a play. How accessible and stable is it from a VO user's perspective? How does VO behave with the liquid glass display?

This sounds similar to what happened in a beta of I think it was sonoma if memory serves where if you had voiceover on the vm just, would not start. I'm not sure if its the same exact thing but I do remember this happening in one of the beta builds of sonoma. For those who can test it, try turning off voiceover before starting the vm and see if that starts it up, then do the same thing with voiceover on. If it starts without voiceover but crashes with voiceover on; yeah its the same bug.

No issues here. The RC is the public version unless apple releases another RC this week. 16 pro max.

Hi Ann Marie for me there are a couple of minor issues but overall it is extremely stable. Certainly, nothing that would make me wish I hadn't been in the beta and or now update.

When I asked about new voices earlier and in this thread, somebody said there were no new voices. And then if I read down the side, they just said that there were two Indian voices that were new. Is that Indian language or English India? I only use my devices in English. So that’s what I was asking about. I should’ve specified if there were any new English voices. Can somebody please clarify that for me? Thanks.

Hi again,

Creating personal voice has become a lot easier. Previously, you had to record a total of 150 phrases. That's no longer the case. In the personal voice section, you are now able to record up to 10 sentences rather than 150. Same goes on MacOS as well. I have first notice the change in beta 9, but now it's available as the RC, and public release that'll be released next week. so, incase you haven't give personal voice a try, give it a go.

The Indian voices are English Indian voices.

I took the plunge and downloaded the RC iOS 26. Since I am a totally VO user, I don't notice any difference with the liquid glass. I like the new varients of the reflection ringtone and currently have reflection pop as my default. How to access message backgrounds and set them within different conversations? I am still exploring. :)
Thanks.

Not to many features, just liquid glass. Check your old settings to make sure they are what you set up. Also check your alarm to make sure it works.

Did personal voice work then for the poster who said it’s accessible? I’d still can’t get the 1.30 GB to download, I’m not sure what I need to try resetting. Very strange bug.

I backed my phone up to the cloud so my settings are customized to my liking. I also have the bedtime feature enabled and that is customized too.

Did so in iOS 18.6.2, yet iOS 26 change something. Just check to see. Hope everything is OK.

Hi, Are you running the RC? if yes and it's still not working, disable and re-enable wifi. if that doesn't work, restart phone.

Thank you for clarifying that. These are two Indian English voices. I will definitely have to take a look at those once I update my device is. I’m probably going to update my iPod while iPhone SE third generation first and it’s my primary phone. I the one that’s in product red and there’s a 256 GB variant. My iPhone 15 is my prime iPhone that I just got on August 15 of this year And I will probably update that after the SE and that one is the pink 512 variant. I’m very happy with both phones. I think everybody is extremely brave for beta testing. And I don’t mean that in like the weird like your inspiration stupid crap like that. I mean like for real because I use voice voice control, and I would never feel comfortable testing on any of my devices. I want everything to work the way it needs to and I just don’t feel comfortable enough to go testing for different bugs and reporting all of them to Apple. I report things to Apple once I’m on a public release though. I just need my device to work properly for me since I have to use two accessibility features. Thanks again for any clarification and I love being back on this website. I feel so happy and lucky that we were able to get this website saved and not have to close it.

FYI, for those who want to test, it is the one that will come out next week. You just get it a week earlier.

Regarding message backgrounds: I figured out how to access message backgrounds. Are they only available for imessage recipients? I have a few contacts that are android users and when I try to customize backgrounds for the message conversation I don't see an option to do so. I am able to customize backgrounds for imessage contacts. Just curious because I want to have backgrounds for pinned messages.

Hi Karok,

This was a known issue mainly I think on Mac but it did appear in an iOS version. Possibly 18.0. I had exactly this issue. Unfortunately, if you google it etc there is no fix. Apple never resolved it as far as I know. One day it just fixed itself for me with no reason behind it. But the issue uyou have regarding the download bla bla etc is exactly what I had. Think the issue was not enough people had the issue to make it a priority. So just keep trying now and then and at some point it may well just work again. Frustrating I know.

thank you Lee for this re personal voice, just wanted to try it but guess it Apples end, not ours as still stating 150 phrases required just want hear how accurate it is

The new voices are not for English (India), even though can read English perfectly with an Indian accent, I tried Aman and it's for Punjabi. In fact, the hints like Actions available or symbols are read in Punjabi.

Good afternoon, and thanks for the heads up!
I’ll definitely give the new RC a try. For those who already installed it—have you noticed any improvements in accessibility, especially VoiceOver responsiveness?

Also, do you think this RC is stable enough for general users to install right now, or would it be better to wait until the official public release next week?

Unless something very unforseen happens this is the release that will come out next week. So more than likely nothing will change before then. Vo for me responds perfectly fine. Mind I've never had issues like that so maybe just lucky.

No differencebetween VO, iOS 18.6.2 and iOS 26.

VO works as expected for me on a base modle iPhone 15. I don't notice a difference between iOS 18.6.2 and 26.0.

I am pleased to report that hold assist works and is pretty cool. I tested it out this morning while on hold with paratransit company. I used hold assist, went about my business, and recieved a call back and resumed where I left off after being on hold.

I hate it! If you look search boxes say in the appstore app or messages are now at the bottom. As is the compose button in messages. Settings to has changed. There doesn't seem to be a way of changing it back either. Also the word delete has been replaced by bin in the phone app to delete a call. That's being picky though.

You can setup to classic. Old way for the phone. If that is what are you talking about.

Is there a way to revert the display back to how it was in iOS 18.6.2? Just curious because my sighted husband told me the screen is very blurry with the liquid glass. If he has difficulty looking at the screen I can't imagine what those with low vision are going through. The liquid glass doesn't affect me because I exclusively use VO but again I'm just curious.

Yes. Sad I forgot and hope someone here will let us know. No issue as I am blind 100%.

Yes to a point. there are some good options now in the phone app for stopping calls etc and yes I turned back to classic. No, I'm talking about if you say go into the messages app in 18.6 edit, compose and search all came before the first message. Now those options are after the last message. Same in the setting app search used to be at the top now it is somewhere at the bottom. Appstore search for apps is even more odd as it is somewhere at the bottom I think the middle if you press but then the results show in a strange way.

To disable the Liquid Glass UI in iOS 26, go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size and turn on Reduce Transparency. You can also switch to Dark Mode, customize app icons to use darker or default styles, and change the Lock Screen clock to a solid design to minimize the glass effect.