Vision 3.1.6 and 3.1.7: Where a Text Goes, and a Tab VoiceOver Names

Vision 3.1.6 and 3.1.7 for iPhone are two one-line releases, a day apart. The first corrects where a text goes when SMS Filtering sends it on for a second look. The second gives the eye button in the middle of the tab bar a name VoiceOver can say. Neither changes what you see on screen. Both change something that was quietly wrong.

This post says what each one fixed, who it touched, and how to tell whether it touched you. The changelog has the App Store date for each release. The four releases before these, 3.1.2 to 3.1.5, have a write-up of their own.

Vision 3.1.6

The App Store note for this release says only that the service connection used when checking text messages was corrected. This is what that sentence means.

What SMS Filtering does with a text

SMS Filtering is the part of the app you switch on from the iPhone Settings app, under Messages, then Unknown & Spam. Once it is on, iOS hands the app each text from a number that is not in your contacts and asks whether it belongs in the Junk folder. Texts from people in your contacts are never handed over at all.

The app answers in two steps. First it reads the text on the phone, looking for a short list of words that turn up in scam texts: payment-app names, a dollar sign, a refund, a code, a discount, a government agency's initials. If it finds one, the text goes to Junk and nothing leaves the phone.

If it finds none, there is a second step, and it is optional. The SMS Filtering Setup screen in Settings has a switch called Remote SMS Verification. It is off unless you turned it on. With it off, a text the phone could not sort on its own is left alone. With it on, the phone sends that text to a StopTheScam server for a second look, and the server's answer decides whether it goes to Junk.

What was wrong

The address the phone sends those texts to is written into the app, not typed by you, and there are two of them: one for the copies of the app we test on our own phones, and one for the app on the App Store. Since December 2023, the App Store copy had carried the testing address. Every text sent on for a second look went to our development server instead of the service the rest of the app uses.

To be plain about what that meant. Both addresses belong to StopTheScam. Nothing was sent anywhere unless Remote SMS Verification was on, and it is off by default. But a development server is where we try things out, not where a person's messages are meant to go, and it is not the service the app's other screens were talking to. That is the defect, and 3.1.6 corrects it.

What changed for you

Vision 3.1.6 sends a text that needs a second look to the same service the rest of the app uses.

Whether that touches you comes down to one switch. Open Vision, go to Settings, then SMS Filtering Setup, and look at Remote SMS Verification. If it is off, nothing was ever sent on, and nothing about this release applies to you. If it is on, update to 3.1.6 or later, and from then on the second look happens where it was always meant to.

Vision 3.1.7

The tab bar at the bottom of the app has five buttons. Four of them are ordinary tabs, each named after the screen it opens. The fifth is the raised eye in the middle, and it is the only way into AI Detective, the screen where you paste in a text, an email, or a phone number and ask for a second opinion.

To VoiceOver, the screen reader built into iPhone, that eye button had no name of its own. The tab slot under it is empty, and the eye symbol on its own is read as "Show", which names nothing. A person moving through the tab bar by touch heard four screen names and one word, Show, that was not one, with no way to know it was the door to the screen they were looking for.

3.1.7 gives the button the label "AI Detective", the screen's own title, exactly as the other four buttons are named after theirs. Nothing on screen moved, and the button does what it did. VoiceOver now reads it as AI Detective, and a double tap opens AI Detective.

This is the same kind of change as 3.1.4 and 3.1.5, and it was worth a release of its own for the same reason. A person who relies on VoiceOver meets the tab bar every time they open the app. A button with no name is a small wall that never comes down on its own.

Two fixes, one habit

Neither release changes what a second opinion is worth. A text that lands in Junk, or one that does not, is a hint about where to look, not a verdict. Text message scams has the habit itself: do not tap the link, do not reply, and check with the company or the person through a route you found yourself. If a text has already led somewhere bad, what to do after a scam is the next page to read.