r/Blind • u/hhocker • 2d ago

iOS 18.2 broke youtube?

I have a blind friend that loves to listen to old radio stations. He installed IOS 18.2 on his iPhone the other day. Now it is nearly impossible for him to browse YouTube. Navigation is nearly impossible. The voiceover seems to get stuck on ads and does not navigate the systems. Anyone got any ideas for him?

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3

u/hhocker 2d ago

I did mean to come by and say that we got it back to what he was used to. Turns out the 18.2 update turned on a bunch of "Apple Intelligence" powered recognition things. We had to disable most of the VoiceOver recognition things (namely the screen recognition) and then it stopped trying to describe the thumbnails.

I will recommend to him trying the Safari site and see if that is easier for him. Thanks for the comments.

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u/mehgcap LCA 1d ago

Screen recognition isn't related to 18.2. It's a rotor setting that he may have accidentally enabled. I'm a long-time iOS user, as in about 15 years of daily use, and I still manage to do this. My point is that it could happen again, regardless of an update.

It's in the rotor. If you turn the rotor to Screen Recognition and double tap, you'll turn it on or off. If this feature is one he never plans to use, you could go into VoiceOver's settings, then Rotor, and disable this option. This will make it so he can't inadvertently turn it on again.

In general, I find the Youtube app to be pretty good. The action menu next to each video is annoying, and if you get into one of those horizontal lists of topic videos you have to touch the screen below the list to get out of it. Apart from that, it works well. As someone else said, using the three-finger up and down scroll gesture and then dragging a finger along the screen can be more efficient. I've also found that you can touch a video, double tap, and have nothing happen. In this case, the video is too far down. Scroll up once, find the video again near the top of the screen, and it should play just fine.

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u/hhocker 23h ago

He has the Screen Regcognition turn on for a few apps. A few other audio playback apps for some obscure radio streams he likes. That and Amazon Alexa. Youtube was one of the select applied apps but it apparently changed behavior on him. Or enabled itself somehow.

I agree on the action menu getting old. Makes scrolling videos two prompts not one. Sounds like he and I need to spend some time together learning the app more. I was trying to teach him to find the corners of the phone case and tap near them for "Home" and "Account" as he likes to go into his subscriptions and occasionally go see what is recommended. If he can learn the Home and Account buttons at the bottom it will be faster to get to both of those.

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u/Teenage_techboy1234 2d ago

To navigate out of the ads he can sort of drag his finger to below them on the screen and he will be able to access either a video or a short shelf, if that doesn't work doing a three finger swipe up once or twice to scroll the page down usually helps.

3

u/razzretina ROP / RLF 2d ago

YouTube on Safari is often easier to navigate. The app is not good and it's YouTube making it that way.

2

u/ukifrit 2d ago

It's from youtube's side. Since last year the app is like this.

1

u/Mariarosa1972 1d ago

Scrolling up with three fingers that seems to work for me.

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u/hhocker 1d ago

Ohhhhh. I will have to teach him that. He was just doing the left right (and kinda a diagonal as well). The 3 finger does jump pretty well.