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Voice Control turns off by itself in iOS 16.2

Hello,


After updating my iPhone 12 to iOS 16.2, Voice Control likes to turn itself off around once a day, usually during the night when I rely on at most. 


You can ask Siri to turn Voice Control ON but it will be unresponsive. The Voice Control indicator can either be blue or gray and be unresponsive. 

Usually when I wake the phone up I will notice that Voice control is turned off (no icon in the top left).


But, last night, I was able to capture two different notifications it gives before turning off by itself. (Provided screenshots)


  1. The microphone is being used by another application. Voice Control will try again in a few moments.
  2. The microphone is already being used by another application. Voice Control will quit.


This happens even with No apps open (even an app switcher) and Background App Refresh turned OFF.

So that means that it’s the iOS software itself.


Rebooting, Force Restart and Shutting Down iPhone… has no effect and doesn’t help fix the issue.


This Never happened in all versions of iOS 15 and iOS 16 until the latest update 16.2.


I use English Canada but I have just downloaded English US to see if switching to that language will make it work when it’s not working. So we’ll see how that goes.


I can’t leave it on English US because my 65 Custom Commands don’t work because they were created with English Canada. ( apparently Apple believes they are incomparable languages )


I can’t move from the shoulders down, and I use Voice Control for everything since it’s so much faster than using Switch Control with Sip N Puff. But use Switch Control as a backup. Been using both accessibility features since they were created. 


iPhone 12

Posted on Jan 2, 2023 11:25 AM

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20 replies

Apr 28, 2023 7:43 PM in response to CodackDesigns

Unfortunately this did not fix the problem… Voice control turns itself off two days later and then the next day.


Asked my roommate how his iPad was doing and he said that voice control has been working good for about a week… he didn't reset his phone or anything.

So my current guest is it has to do with the Apple servers causing the problems.


Incredibly irritating that they have had this problem since December 13 2022.

Apr 28, 2023 8:08 PM in response to CodackDesigns

Wondering if your iPhone has plenty of memory / storage space free in which to operate smoothly.


How to check the storage on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support


ie: Someone fixed a Voice Control problem a few years back, on realising they had mistakenly downloaded a heap of music files. The Voice control problem vanished with the deletion of the un-needed files.

Voice Control turns off by itself in iOS 16.2

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