Learning iOS VoiceOver Gestures
Last updated: October 3, 2012
If you find any of the information useful, or if you find anything to be incomplete or inaccurate, please let me know.
Practice gestures
Go to Settings > General > Accessibility > VoiceOver, then tap VoiceOver Practice. When you finish practicing, tap Done. If you don’t see the VoiceOver Practice button, make sure VoiceOver is turned on.
Navigate and read
- Tap: Speak item.
- Flick right or left: Select the next or previous item.
- Flick up or down: Depends on the Rotor Control setting. See “Using the VoiceOver rotor control”.
- Two-finger tap: Stop speaking the current item.
- Two-finger flick up: Read all from the top of the screen.
- Two-finger flick down: Read all from the current position.
- Two-finger “scrub”: Move two fingers back and forth three times quickly (making a “z”) to dismiss an alert or go back to the previous screen.
- Two-finger triple tap: Open the Item Chooser.
- Three-finger flick up or down: Scroll one page at a time.
- Three-finger flick right or left: Go to the next or previous page (such as the Home screen, Stocks, or Safari).
- Three-finger tap: Speak additional information, such as position within a list or whether text is selected.
- Four-finger tap at top of screen: Select the first item on the page.
- Four-finger tap at bottom of screen: Select the last item on the page.
Activate
- Double-tap: Activate the selected item.
- Triple-tap: Double-tap an item.
- Split-tap: An alternative to selecting an item and double-tapping is to touch an item with one finger, then tap the screen with another to activate an item.
- Touch an item with one finger, tap the screen with another finger (“split- tapping”): Activate the item.
- Double-tap and hold (1 second) + standard gesture: Use a standard gesture.
The double-tap and hold gesture tells iPad to interpret the subsequent gesture as standard. For example, you can double-tap and hold, then without lifting your finger, drag your finger to slide a switch.
- Two-finger double-tap: Play or pause in Music, Videos, YouTube, Voice Memos, or Photos.
Take a photo (Camera). Start or pause recording in Camera or Voice Memos. Start or stop the stopwatch.
- Two-finger double-tap and hold: Open the element labeler.
- Two-finger triple-tap: Open the Item Chooser.
- Three-finger double-tap: Mute or unmute VoiceOver.
- Three-finger triple-tap: Turn the screen curtain on or off.