Lock screen goes back to sleep too quickly.

By Rusty Perez, 31 July, 2025

Forum

iOS and iPadOS

Hi there, I have been grumbling to myself and my wife for a long time about this and now I'm coming here to ask questions! When ever I receive a notification, email or text, my phone wakes up and either begins to read the subject or I scroll through the lock screen to find the info. But, it usually goes back to sleep too quickly for me to hear the subject of the email, or the content of the text! Is there any way to adjust this? I have had some success by facing the screen toward my face and moving the phone gently thinking that maybe it will stay awake if it knows I'm paying attention. It works sometimes.

Similarly, I have an app on my phone which displays affirmations on the lock screen, but it only displays a portion of the text of the affirmation. Is there any way to increase the amount of info an app displays on the lock screen?

Thanks so much for any info you can provide!

Rusty

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Comments

Use the Notification Center

For now I recommend using the Notification. Open notification juscenter just like when you're opening control center but wait for the second VoiceOver haptic. Then lift your finger. You can also do this from the status bar. Just touch your camera area, then swipe down with 3 fingers.

Hopefully this helps.
Thanks

Bug

Is a big bug, when ever reading messages or notification be it by Siri or VO lock screen locks. Is more consistent with current iOS.

Still an issue

Yes, this is still a problem. The phone can turn off on the lock screen in the middle of Voiceover reading a notification. I'm guessing that sighted people may also get frustrated by this too since they might be reading a ntoification on the locked screen and not finish before the phone shuts off. I can't think of an algorithm that would keep the locked screen open long enough for sighted people to read notifications. How would the phone know when a sighted person is done reading? With Voiceover, one could imagine an algorithm that wouldn't allow the phone to shut off while Voiceover was speaking.

So maybe this isn't strictly an accessibility issue.

--pete

peter

What I find interested is that in my iPad 9 with iOS 26.01. This is not an issue. Just for me 16 pro max.

Reported this to Apple

I noticed this problem also, both on my iPhone 15 Pro Max and my M4 iPad Pro 13". I reported it to Apple Accessibility, but the more people who report it, the higher priority it'll get in the fix list. As someone who deals with bugs in Software as a Service, I know all too well how bugs are prioritized based on the recurring revenue totalled up by effected users.

It's possible, and likely, that this doesn't happen to sighted users as much, as the devices in question do look for "attention," to see if you're looking at the device before timing out. I haven't tried this out yet for myself, but I wonder if it would behave differently if the phone's camera can detect your eyes looking in the general direction of the phone. I often have the phone pointed in anywhere other than my face, like laying flat on the desk or on the couch next to me when it does this. I know there is a setting for attention either in the FaceID section of settings, or VoiceOver settings. But if voiceOver is reading something, that needs to count as attention, and not lock the screen.

Report it to Apple Accessibility if you haven't, so they know more of us are affected.

Bo

People are doing so, apple keep saying they are working on it. It must be the worse bug on the universe that they can not fix it. It was in iOS 18.6. Also apple is a 1 Trillion company and they can not get enough people to fix a iOS? What is that saying about apple.

Hmm reporting

Yep reported but my FB simply implies nobody has reported it. "no similar reports" which is obviously rubbish.

FaceID and Attention settings under Accessibility

I haven't had this problem prior to iOS 26. I just checked under Settings, Accessibility, FaceID and Attention, and I have Attention Aware Features turned off. With this off, the iPhone shouldn't be checking if you're "looking" at the lock screen to determine if it should lock the screen sooner. I think this is the broken function here, though i'm sure Apple will figure it out.

But it's worth checking that this is off if you have had this issue previous to iOS 26. In fact, I think I'll try toggling it on and off to see if it makes a difference now. It's certainly working when my iPhone is unlocked, in that it's been sitting next to me as I type this and hasn't locked yet.

And...nope. no difference.

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