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Hey Digital Bytes listeners, this is Michael coming to you from a different type of microphone. But I think we've done this before and today for my digital byte, I want to talk to you about the Shokz openrun Pro 2 headset that just came out in October of 2024. Now of course I'm going to throw a mention of at dies in if you are looking for this headset, definitely check out atduys.com that's alphatangogue s.com and the current price of this headset is 179.95. Now if you're familiar with the Shokz Openrun Pro headset, the feel is a lot. It's pretty similar except for the transducers which are the parts that sit on your ears are slightly thicker than the OpenRun Pro headset. The OpenRun Pro 2 has probably my most favorite feature and that is it charges with USB C no more of this magnetic charging cable. You can use a USB C cable that plugs in under the flap behind your right ear. Now I'm going to touch the headset which means you may or may not hear the sounds of me touching it because I am recording this into just press record on my iPhone using the Bluetooth. On the left side there is nothing around the ears except for the multifunction button which is directly on the outside of the left ear. On the right side going from the back forward is the flap that you bring down in order to plug in the USB C port. On the top edge of the right side is nothing, but on the bottom edge is a volume down button and the volume up button which is what you press to put the device in pairing mode by pressing and holding it. It's also how you turn it on and then there's nothing on the earpiece on the right side. Now the microphone you've been hearing is the Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 microphone. It's pretty decent for a Bluetooth microphone, in my opinion. It does not have a boom microphone that comes down. These microphones are backed by my ears built into the openrun Pro 2 headset. This headset is amazing when it comes to sound. If you're used to shocks, you might be used to the fact that it's kind of a little tinny and not designed for music consumption or audio drama consumption or podcast consumption. Really you can, but it's not the highest quality. However, when you put the openrun Pro 2s on, I think your mind's going to be blown away. I believe it uses a combination of bone conduction and directional sound firing speakers. That's why the transducers, the items that sit in front of your ears, are thicker than you're used to in previous iterations. But this thickness gives you a speaker which points directly at your ear. So you get the higher quality and much wider frequency response of audio coming from the OpenRun Pro 2s. Someone asked me, michael, how's the latency if I flick my finger? I do notice a tiny bit of latency, but honestly, it's completely bearable when I'm trying to do any tasks on my iPhone. One thing I will say is dictation will work if you two finger double tap in an edit field. But more often than not, I don't hear the notification that dictation is listening. Therefore, I'll two finger double tap, wait about two seconds and then speak my message and then two finger double tap again to end the dictation. This is the same with Siri. In some instances, I typically don't hear the Siri listening sound, but if you press and hold the multifunction button on the left ear, you can speak to Siri. Or if you press and hold the.
Button on your phone, hi everyone. Do you find that sometimes your phone doesn't work as expected and you really struggle to figure out what on earth has happened? You haven't installed anything different, you haven't adjusted settings that you know of? Well, I had an experience yesterday. I was working with someone and their phone and things were not working as expected. The problem was the send button for text messages was being reported as an up arrow and it was kind of in the middle of the screen. It just did not work properly and the person did not have any idea what had changed. There were no new apps downloaded, couldn't figure anything out. So we fiddled around with a Lot of settings and I thought, well, maybe slide to type was on and maybe some accessibility setting had changed. We couldn't find it until I suddenly thought a light bulb turned on. A big flash from heaven gave me a lightning bolt opportunity to say is screen recognition turned on now? That was the issue. It hadn't been turned on accidentally as far as we know, other than perhaps it is automatically included in the rotor. And so when you twist your fingers and you have all those choices in the rotor, it is one of the choices. And if you accidentally perhaps didn't hear that and swipe up or down and accidentally turn it on, then if you didn't know that, you would really be in a pickle because you wouldn't know what happened. And it changes everything. It is meant to be helpful. However, I have found it more of a pain than anything else. I even have thought an app was broken, but turns out somehow the app turned it on or it was accidentally turned on. So post haste I have taken it out of the rotor. And you can do that by going to your voiceover settings and rotor and rotor items and then you can uncheck or deselect the items that are selected. So I wanted to show you also how you can tell if any apps are automatically using screen recognition. So I've gone to my voiceover settings and then I've gone to this place.
Right here, voiceover recognition button. So we're going to double tap that and that is after the braille setting in the voiceover settings itself. So here is this item. Using on device intelligence, your iPhone will automatically improve the accessibility of apps, images and text. Voiceover recognition should not be relied upon in circumstances where you could be harmed or injured, in high risk situations, for navigation or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition.
So there's our legal ease to protect Apple from anything. And so if I swipe right live. Recognition button, there is a little feature. Where you can turn that on and it will recognize things around you. Your iPhone will describe objects and the environment around you. Image descriptions on button. Okay, I do have that turned on. Your iPhone will speak descriptions of images in apps and on the web. Screen recognition off button.
Okay, there is our culprit right here. Screen recognition. And yes it is off. But if I swipe one more time. Your iPhone will automatically make apps more accessible by recognizing items on the screen. No, it does not in my experience. And please let us know at feedback at Unmute show because if your mileage varies, I want to hear about it. But this has caused me no End of frustration. Now if I swipe right again, text. Recognition, switch button on.
Okay, so that's the next category. So what we're going to do is we're going to go back to the left. Your iPhone will automatically Screen recognition off button. Even though it's off. I'm going to show you what happens when I double tap it and the things that I can hear. Screen recognition switch button off.
Okay, so even though it says switch button off, which it is, it is now in a screen to tell me more information about what apps will be using screen recognition when I open those particular apps. If I had screen recognition on 19.
MB required, your iPhone will automatically improve the accessibility of apps that have no accessibility information, such as identifying the state of buttons or toggles and by grouping related items together in other apps. Screen recognition can't be accessed through the. Rotor unless you take it off the router like I promptly did. So we'll swipe right again. Apply to apps 3 apps button.
Okay, so purposely I have applied it to 3 apps so that I can show you how this works. So if I double tap, you will be able to hear some of the apps that I have selected this for. So we're going to double tap here. Show hidden apps button. Okay, so we'll swipe right. Apply to heading and here are the. Apps that it is applied to. One blocker button. One blogger selected 23andMe button.
So one blocker is not selected actually and this 23andMe is selected. So all of these are in alphabetical order if I swipe right. ACB link button. So there is the next app and it is not selected. Now the challenge is I have 210 apps on my phone, so it took me a little while to swipe through them which ones were selected and deselect them. So there is no chance of it being turned on on any of the apps that I use. So I'm going to go back to.
The 23andMe selected 23andMe button. And when I double tap it 23andMe.
It is no longer selected. And so now I would only have two apps that it applies to. So I would suggest that if you are a little bit overwhelmed by the rotor or you have any issues with it, that you take it out of the rotor or you just be very, very mindful of when it's in the rotor and just navigate away from it. And if you've had successful experiences with the screen recognition, I'd love to know, but it's caused me more issues than not. So I'VE turned it off, I've removed it from the rotor, and I've deselected all apps to which it applies.
Accessing Today View with Voiceover how you access this is Do a three finger swipe to the right until you hear Today View. Once you hear Today View, you'll be in the Today View section. Then what you want to do is go down to Edit at the bottom, do a single finger double click there and you'll be presented with an option in the top left corner that says Add Widget. Double click on that and then you'll be presented with a whole bunch of widgets. They'll be stock and third party widgets that you can customize to your liking. You go through and pick the ones you want. For this example, let's say Weather. You do a single finger double click on Weather and you'll be presented with a bunch of options. You'll be presented with different sizes of the widget, small, medium, large, and each widget option will have different information that it provides to you. So once you decide which one you want, then at the bottom you hit Continue and it will place that widget into the Today View. Then you can go through and find more widgets and when you find another one that you like, then you do the same process. You do a single finger double click. It'll open up all the parameters for that widget, you configure it to your liking, and then you hit Continue. And you can go through all of these widgets and fill this space with whatever widgets you like. And then when you access that space, you'll be provided with all of those widgets and their information to give you a great quick view.