How to make your iPhone stop talking by turning off VoiceOver

If your iPhone or iPad is talking to you and you notice outlines around different areas of your screen or where you’re tapping, you may have VoiceOver turned on. VoiceOver is an accessibility feature in iOS for users who are blind or have low-vision, however if you haven’t turned it on intentionally, you’ll probably want to turn it off. Follow along for how to return your device back to normal.

There are two common ways that VoiceOver is turned on unintentionally. First, your iPhone may have a triple-click shortcut turned on to control accessibility features. To find out, do a triple-click on your iPhone or iPad Home button to see if it turns off VoiceOver.

If that didn’t do the trick, you can also tell Siri “turn off VoiceOver.” If you’re still having issues follow along below for how to manually turn off VoiceOver. If you have gotten it turned off successfully it’s still valuable to keep reading to double-check you don’t have a triple-click shortcut turned on and learn where these features are in iOS Settings.

If you have Touch ID enabled you should be able to use it to unlock your iPhone. If you don’t use Touch ID, press the Home button if you’re screen looks like the bottom left photo below (if you’re running an older version of iOS with Slide to Unlock on the bottom of the screen, tap once to select it and double tap it to unlock your iPhone).

You should now see the Enter Passcode screen. Tap once to select the first number of your passcode and double-tap enter that number. Repeat this for each number or character for your passcode.

Next, navigate to Settings like the photo below. Tap once to select and double-tap to launch the Settings app. Do the same for General → Accessibility.

VoiceOver will be at the very top. You’re almost there! Tap to select, and then double-tap to enter VoiceOver settings. One last time do the same things on the VoiceOver toggle to turn it off.

Tap Accessibility in the top left corner of your screen and Off should appear to the right of VoiceOver like the photo below on the left. And let’s check out one last thing to make sure there isn’t a triple-click shortcut turned on. Scroll down to the very bottom of the Accessibility settings. If next to Accessibility Shortcut it shows Off you’re all set. If it shows something like VoiceOver or anything else, we’ll want to tap on Accessibility Shortcut and uncheck the triple-click shortcuts.

Tap on any of these that have a check mark like the photo above on the right to turn off the shortcut (this will prevent accidental activation of these features). Now your settings should look like this, you’re all set!