Anyone on iPhone 8 having run-ins with voiceover recognition?

By Danielle, 2 December, 2020

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

My partner has an iPhone 8, and it updated to iOS 14.2 up from 13 overnight. Whenever he tries using a three finger quadruple tap to copy spoken text to the clipboard, it ends up copying the text it pulls when it automatically tries recognizing things…
Except that’s not supposed to happen with the iPhone 8. Of course, there is no way to disable it in settings, since it isn’t supposed to work on this model. Anyone else having the same experience?

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Comments

By Samuel J on Monday, December 7, 2020 - 04:43

This is a bug indeed, one that has been complained about on social media and various forums by Voiceover users more than it should have been reported to apple in my opinion. The VoiceOver Recognition feature is a bit all over the place on all devices; ones that it is supported on, as well as those that it isn't really supposed to be supported on. Nevertheless, here is a suggestion for your case: try turning off the Scene Descriptions option under Verbosity settings in the VoiceOver settings menu. This should help. Please note: if you do turn it off, voiceover will also no longer report stuff like the number of people visible in the frame when you are trying to take a picture using the Camera app. So, if your partner does use the Camera app for taking pictures, this is something to be mindful of.

Thanks so much for the suggestion. It didn’t change any of the behavior we’ve been seeing over the past day or so. As a note of interest, though, there is an apply to apps button below the toggle, and I was able to go in and make camera an exception.

By Eric Davis on Monday, December 7, 2020 - 04:43

I saw this same behavior with the back tap feature. I had an iPhone X and was able to use the back tap when I was not supposed to be able to do this

Yes, I am aware that that option is there; "Apply to Apps", and you can supposedly select or deselect the apps that you want the setting to be applicable to. However, that doesn't seem to work consistently either. In fact, in my experience, it doesn't work, period. hence I didn't want to include it in my recommendation. As I said, it really just looks like the entire thing is not at all done right and the settings don't seem to work or apply the way they should. So annoying.
I wish more people would report this to Apple. I haven't seen it filed as a bug here on Applevis either. At least not clearly. I may have missed it, but I haven't come across anything that suggests that these bugs are filed and reported to Apple for all devices and that they still persist in iOS 14.2.

By Jessica Brown on Monday, December 7, 2020 - 04:43

I have an iPhone eight on iOS 14.2 and it works good for me the three finger quadruple tap. In fact it seems to work better in iOS 14 because now it only copies the text not the heading level three and link announcements etc. Before iOS 14 those would be copied in and I would end up having to delete them. If you want I can have a look at my voiceover settings and tell you what they are.

By Danielle on Monday, December 7, 2020 - 04:43

In reply to by Samuel J

I didn’t realize that apply to apps feature was spotty, as well. I’ll ask my partner to be on the lookout for that with his situation. Being new to this community, I’m not sure: can just anyone file bug reports here, or does it have to be someone a bit higher up in the chain?
I hope more people report these feature glitches to Apple, as well. It’s quite frustrating.

By Danielle on Monday, December 7, 2020 - 04:43

In reply to by Jessica Brown

That would be so helpful! It would also solidify whether there are any settings inconsistencies, or if this really just is a bug to add to the heaping handful with these new features.
Thanks for offering! I appreciate it.