AVSpeechSynthesizer problem in iOS 16 Beta

App & System Services Core OS
And0Austria OP
Created Sep ’22
Replies 12
Boosts 6
Views 6.5k
Participants 14

Setting a voice for AVSpeechSynthesizer leads to an heap buffer overflow. Turn on address sanitizer in Xcode 14 beta and run the following code. Anybody else experiencing this problem, is there any workaround?

let synthesizer = AVSpeechSynthesizer()
var synthVoice : AVSpeechSynthesisVoice?

func speak() {
	let voices = AVSpeechSynthesisVoice.speechVoices()
     
    for voice in voices {
      if voice.name == "Daniel" {    // select e.g. Daniel voice
        synthVoice = voice
      }
    }
     
    let utterance = AVSpeechUtterance(string: "Test 1 2 3")
     
    if let synthVoice = synthVoice {
		    utterance.voice = synthVoice							
    }
     
    synthesizer.speak(utterance)						// AddressSanitizer: heap-buffer-overflow
}
Replies  12
Boosts  6
Views  6.5k
Participants  14
Frameworks Engineer OP
Apple
Sep ’22

Heya! While there is no workaround I can offer, I do want to let you know that we are aware of this issue. Thanks for taking the time to bring this up!

1
MGG9 OP
Sep ’22

As far as I know there isn't currently a solution. Hopefully Apple will fix it before release.

0
And0Austria OP
Sep ’22

Unfortunately it hasn't been fixed for the iOS 16 release, now I'm seeing a lot of crashes due to this problem.

0
ejrowlance1 OP
Sep ’22

I have a similar problem with an old Objective-C program. I queue some utterances and nothing happens. No errors and the didFinishSpeechUtterance delegate method never gets called. Is this a confirmed problem with iOS 16?

0
fs7 OP
Sep ’22

The problem happens on simulator with iOS 16 for me. But on physical devices, it works as expected, the return of speechVoices is not empty. It may be a bug only on simulator with iOS 16?

0
timothycosta OP
Sep ’22

I'm also experiencing this crash.

0
And0Austria OP
Sep ’22

Still broken in iOS 16.0.2 and iOS 16.1 beta 2. @all: Please add tickets in http://feedbackassistant.apple.com and refer to my ticket number FB11401700 to let Apple know that many Apps have this problem.

0
ejrowlance1 OP
Sep ’22

I was able to get my app to start speaking again on the iOS 16 simulators by downloading a voice. It appears those simulators have no voices loaded by default. Here are the steps (on the simulated device itself):

  • Settings/Accessibility/Spoken Content
  • Must turn on Speak Selection. That will cause a "Voices" button to display. Touch that.
  • Select your language.
  • Pick a voice. Click the download button. Wait.
  • When done, you can back out and turn off Speak Selection on the way if

you want. Turning it on is necessary to be able to select and download a voice.

I don't have access to a real iOS 16 device right now so don't know if it's a problem on the devices or not.

1
barbaramartina OP
Nov ’22

feedback assistant report link

FB11809156

I was able to make it work on simulators by following the instructions from ejrowlance1.

It does NOT work on the device.

  1. The voices array from AVSpeechSynthesisVoice.speechVoices() is NOT empty.
  2. The utterance is not spoken
  3. Forcing a voice on the utterance (with the id of one of the listed voices) does NOT make the synthesizer speak.
  4. Forcing a voice on the utterance creating the voice with a local identifier (example "en-US") does not work.
  5. Downloading more voices and killing settings does not work
  6. Setting a rate on the utterance does not work (why it would work anyways, it is just a rate... but I just do not know what else to try).

HERE IS THE CODE

 private var synthesizer: AVSpeechSynthesizer = AVSpeechSynthesizer()

  func read() {

        let utterance = AVSpeechUtterance(string: "Some text")


        synthesizer.speak(utterance)


    }

These are the errors I get in the console:

  • [catalog] Unable to list voice folder
  •  [AXTTSCommon] File file:///var/MobileAsset/AssetsV2/com_apple_MobileAsset_Trial_Siri_SiriTextToSpeech/purpose_auto/14b85d56e1353471b77c970980a81324be7cdf4e.asset/AssetData/vocalizer-user-dict.dat contained data that was not null terminated
  •  [AXTTSCommon] MauiVocalizer: 11006 (Can't compile rule): regularExpression=\Oviedo(?=, (\x1b\pause=\d+\)?Florida)\b, message=unrecognized character follows , characterPosition=1 **(WHY THE HELL IS TRYING TO READ OVIEDO AND FLORIDA? I HAVE NOT IDEA!)**😂😂😂😂
  • [AXTTSCommon] MauiVocalizer: 16038 (Resource load failed): component=ttt/re, uri=, contentType=application/x-vocalizer-rettt+text, lhError=88602000
2
naticio OP
Mar ’23

Any update to this issue? I spent two entire days trying to find why my utterance is not speaking sometimes. I found that Apple has a bug. The delegate doesn’t kick func startedSpeaking

2
Mattias OP
Jul ’23

I still can't get this to work in Xcode 15b5 and iOS 17. Any update how to get text to speech work?

1
Kable OP
Oct ’23

I've got a similar problem. It seems that AVSpeechSynthesizer does not work well with Address Sanitizer. I spent a lot of time trying to figure this out. Terrible experience! Don't want to believe that the Apple engineering team left this problem unsolved for a year. For a temporary solution, can they just turn off the Address Sanitizer for AVSpeechSynthesizer?

0
AVSpeechSynthesizer problem in iOS 16 Beta
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