VoiceOver issues on iOS

Platform

[X] iOS
[ ] Android

Obsidian Mobile version: v0.0.xx

v0.0.16 (3) according to TestFlight

  • None of the menu items are accessible with VoiceOver. Only the list of notes.
  • Assuming there is a similar button to toggle preview off/on, it is not accessible with VoiceOver.
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With version 0.0.17, you can no longer get to the command palette with a double tap and hold until there is a chime and then drag down. This makes the iOS completely inaccessible without some knowledge of the layout of the screen so you can attempt to navigate without VoiceOver. Time to wait for a few more updates. :wink:

I’m glad I saw this, was about to post a request for better Voiceover access myself.

A few more details.

As far as I can see, most of the user interface is invisible to voiceover. No status bar, no keyboard bar, etc. what we see when we open the app is the title of the note and the note, nothing else.

The other big problem is it’s impossible to toggle any settings. You can do things like edit file names and paths etc, and you can add community plugins, although the problem there is that you can’t toggle safe mode off to see them initially, and of course you can’t enable core plugins because you can’t toggle them, :relaxed:.

For any voiceover users, if you can, hook up an external keyboard. This makes most things possible. The way I’ve handled the settings issues are to edit the settings files directly. I’ve found a couple of github repositories with settings files, and just made sure Obsidian wasn’t running and cut and pasted settings into the right file. Again, this is tricky because the Obsidian settings folder is hidden. You’ll need something like Working Copy or Textastic to see it.

Oh, and I haven’t actually had any trouble pulling down to get to the command pallet, which is lucky, :relaxed:.

The right and left side panels, backlinks, tags etc work fine too. Again, I think there are buttons that Voiceover can’t see, but that hasn’t been too much of a problem yet.

Even with all the hassles, I’ve imported my markdown notes folder and I’m having quite a lot of fun playing with it.

Which iPhone and iOS version are you using? Pull down to open the command palette doesn’t work for me on iOS 14.6 on an iPhone XS Max.

Right now an original iPad Pro on 14.6 in landscape mode. I haven’t actually put it on my phone yet.

I can also get the left and right swipes that bring up the sidebars to work, but not as reliably.

Honestly, right now I’d probably say the keyboards pretty essential.

I just wanted to report that I am also having issues with voice over on the iPhone with this app. I created a new note, but cannot figure out how to get to the notes list. There seems to be no back button when you are in the body of the note. Also the new vault button is spoken as text and not a button that you can press.

Have you tried using a different AI voiceover software to overcome this issue?
because VoiceOver has a lot of bugs that they fix from time to time, I used to rely on it before but not so much anymore…