Portable Sonos Roam, Bluetooth connection: VoiceOver increases volume to 100 percent

By Elena Brescacin, 7 August, 2021

Forum
Apple Hardware and Compatible Accessories

Hello, I have a sonos roam, the latest speaker produced by Sonos inc.
It's my favourite: portable, versatile, good quality sound, mobile app accessibility, voice assistants and many audio services available. It could be the best wi-fi -sonos and airplay2-, and Bluetooth combo.
But, there is a but.
When I am in Bluetooth connection out of my wi-fi network, music plays properly but VoiceOver goes to maximum volume making it almost unusable.
The volume increases only when I have music playing, but not while it's paused.
Before contacting Sonos to warn them about this weird issues, I would like to ask the community if you have had this problem with this speaker or with others - Bose soundlink micro also created it to me but it was very rare.
To be more specific: VoiceOver's voice speaks through the phone's speaker - as it should be -, not on the sonos.
Let me know if it's an iOS problem, in that case I won't disturb Sonos for this trouble!
In case of iOS bug, I don't hide that I am hoping in an iOS15 fix...

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Comments

By tHc on Saturday, August 14, 2021 - 22:03

Hey there,

This bug has been present since ... Hmm, I believe it's iOS 13 but it could be earlier. It tends to happen more often since 14 though. It's related to iOS/iPadOS, not to Sonos products. It'll occure with pretty much any bluetooth device, as well as with some AirPlay 1 only compatibles devices.
I do also hope that Apple fix it. But in the meantime, there's sort of a workaround: add 'sounds' to your rotor, if it isn't there already. Then, whenever you connect to your speaker, just disable sounds using the rotor and it'll stop bugging.

Hope this helps!

Chris

By Elena Brescacin on Saturday, August 14, 2021 - 22:03

Hello, thanks for now; I have set "sounds" on rotor and then set the sounds to off before playing music.
It seems to work better, if in some rare cases it still occurs - it said "screen locked" with very high volume.
Now that Bug Reporter is no longer available, it's quit difficult to report bugs in real time, Accessibility mail seems the only way

By Elena Brescacin on Saturday, August 14, 2021 - 22:03

I am here to update about the bug I encountered in Bluetooth speakers.
VoiceOver's speech still goes at 100% when I attempt to increase or decrease speaker's volume, from the phone or from the speaker itself, or when a notification is received while screen is unlocked and audio is playing from the speaker. And also during the pause between a track and another - in Apple Music for example.
This happens even if I deactivated VoiceOver sounds from the rotor; this operation fixes bug in regular operations, but when sound or volume is somehow involved, bug wakes up again.
I'd love to upload a bug report into Apple's feedback assistant, but as I am not sure if the problem still occurs in iOS15, I have put it into stand-by. I suppose to have isolated it, and can reproduce it step by step, but as I have only a phone and I use it for work, I did not feel like trying developer or public beta versions this year.