You’re making a video on your iPhone, expecting the sound to be crisp, but there’s nothing. No audio. This can happen with iOS 18 when you use Spatial Audio mode, a feature that’s supposed to give you amazing 3D sound but ends up cutting it off completely. Let’s talk about what’s going on and how to fix it.
Spatial Audio makes it feel like sounds are coming from all around you—like surround sound in your headphones. The idea is to give you a more immersive experience. Apple built it to adjust the sound to each ear so it feels more real. Cool, right? Except, sometimes, it doesn’t work at all, and you end up with silent videos.
What’s causing the no sound issue?
Here’s the kicker: it’s Vocal Shortcuts, a feature that’s supposed to make things easier by letting you control your phone with your voice. Turns out, it’s the bad guy here. Vocal Shortcuts is messing with the sound in your videos. Apple’s introduced a bunch of new features, but this one is giving people headaches, from freezing music apps to CarPlay cutting off.
How do you fix it?
Let’s fix this together. You can stop this sound issue with just a couple of taps. Here’s what you need to do:
- Go to Settings on your iPhone.
- Tap on Accessibility.
- Scroll to Vocal Shortcuts.
- Turn off the feature, or even delete it.
That’s it! Once you do that, the sound in your videos should be back to normal. But wait—if it’s still not working, don’t stress.
There’s one more thing you can try. Switch your audio settings from Spatial Audio to Mono Audio:
- Go to Settings.
- Tap on Accessibility.
- Find Audio/Visual.
- Switch from Spatial Audio to Mono Audio.
That little tweak has helped others get their sound working again.
Apple hasn’t officially acknowledged the issue yet. No update, no fix, no time frame. They’re quiet about it, but in the meantime, the workarounds I just mentioned should do the trick.