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Accessibility > Spoken Content > Speak Screen with Speech Controller suddenly pronouncing everything wrong

Is anyone else suddenly having issues with pronunciation in Spoken Content in iOS 16.6?


I use Accessibility > Spoken Content > Speak Screen (with Speech Controller on) every day to read a number of things on my iphone 14pro - like ebooks via the Kindle app and web articles or newsletters in Chrome browser. Last week my iPhone began completely mispronouncing words ALL THE TIME, like, with astounding frequency.


A word in almost every sentence is now wrong, common words like “the” or “my” and many others. Usually it’s not too bad, with maybe one word every 2-5 pages might be mispronounced, usually names or less common words.  


More examples: pronouncing “my” as “me” or “my” randomly, sometimes if a word is at the end of a line it totally forgets to say anything after the first letter so “me” is just a grunted “m”. It’s pronouncing “the” as “thee” or “the” in the wrong context, saying “he’s alive” like “hess-aliv” or “medicine” as “medeeceen” or “know” as “k-nau” or “you” as “y-ow”. It’s like they’ve completely broken it. 


Nothing is fixing it. I’ve tried:

  • turning spoken content and the speech controller off in settings > closing all apps > then turning them back on again (this sometimes fixes it when it gets buggy and won’t play or stops speaking randomly)
  • changing voices / re-downloaded the voice - I use Jamie Premium UK voice which I find best and have used for ages, but I tried Australian ones too and they are the same
  • tried a force restart
  • I even completely wiped my phone settings 
  • I did a bug report last week too 


I changed nothing to cause it, in fact it was reading an ebook, I paused it and came back to it 30 mins later and it was suddenly horrible. 


*I’m using an iphone 14 pro on iOS 16.6 in Australia with all my apps up to date. 

iPhone 14 Pro, iOS 16

Posted on Aug 28, 2023 10:21 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 29, 2023 4:26 PM

I’ve notice the same. I’ve tried to change the voice and then change it back. I’ve restarted my phone and chose region dialect but nothing seems to help. This sometimes happens after an update but this started in the middle of a page after pausing for a few minutes. I have long commutes and want my book read to me. Hope they get a bug fix

for this asap.


13 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 29, 2023 4:26 PM in response to Michaelhere

I’ve notice the same. I’ve tried to change the voice and then change it back. I’ve restarted my phone and chose region dialect but nothing seems to help. This sometimes happens after an update but this started in the middle of a page after pausing for a few minutes. I have long commutes and want my book read to me. Hope they get a bug fix

for this asap.


Aug 29, 2023 7:09 PM in response to meeks_84

This is driving me crazy. I use Speak Screen constantly to read books because I get lots of headaches and migraines. It’s too hard to read normally when my head hurts.


All the sudden it’s mispronouncing everything. I like speak screen instead of audiobooks because often the narrators voice acting distracts from the story. Speak screen’s computer voice lets me focus on the story.


I really really hope they fix this soon. Does apple check these discussions or is there another place to formally report bugs?

Aug 29, 2023 10:20 PM in response to meeks_84

Hmm seems like you just have one language, that’s not the problem then.

If you go under VoiceOver options and choose “Voice” what options you get? There is something about auto selecting the correct language?

And just in case it’s a bug, I would try hard rebooting the iPhone by pressing

Volume Up

Volume Down

Hold the Power Button until you see the Apple logo, then release it

Aug 30, 2023 5:25 PM in response to Michaelhere

@Michaelhere Technically I have voice over off - since it completely changes how my phone works/requires interactions I can't remember how to do that are really inefficient I can't use this, I completely understand it has a place in the vision impaired community but mine is off. When I turn it on I see all the same voices I can see in Spoken Content > Voices - it's interesting you can set each to a different voice if you want. But I've tried changing voices as I said at the top, I've tried hard reset/reboot and even wiped all network and wifi settings since you can't actually wipe or reset your accessibility settings.


I've also noticed entering my own pronunciations is exceptionally faulty as well, this has always been buggy and required you to turn spoken content off, lock the phone, unlock the phone, close the app you were using, turn spoken content back on then open the app again that you are having it read from... but now it won't implement custom pronunciations at all no matter what.


I've got a sinking feeling Apple is changing the back end at the moment to prepare for the new ios 17 Listen feature to have siri read web pages, I'm wondering if they've changed to an AI type system that's just not good yet, which could mean it remains broken for months yet.

Accessibility > Spoken Content > Speak Screen with Speech Controller suddenly pronouncing everything wrong

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