Known issue · iPhone & iPad
No sound in a session? Here is the fix.
Once in a while an iPhone session starts and you hear nothing — the transcript moves, the examiner is clearly talking, and there is silence. It is a bug in Apple's audio system, not in your device and not in your account. It takes one tap to clear, and this page explains why it happens so it stops being alarming.
Tap “No sound? Tap here”
The button sits just below the transcript while a session is running. Tapping it rebuilds the audio connection on the spot, without ending your session — your setup, your case material and your time are all kept.
If the first tap does not do it, tap it again. The second tap goes further and rebuilds the session's audio from scratch. Needing the button is not something you did wrong, and it is not a fault in your account.
Close the app fully, wait about thirty seconds, then reopen it
The wait is the part that matters, and it is the step most people skip. iOS holds on to the audio hardware for a short moment after a call ends, so reopening immediately hands the app the same stuck state it just had. Give it half a minute and the next session starts clean.
Why it happens
Apps that use your microphone and speaker together — voice calls, dictation, live audio — all share one piece of Apple's system called the VoiceProcessingIO audio unit. It handles echo cancellation so the examiner's voice does not feed back into your microphone.
Occasionally that component does not release cleanly when a session ends, and the claim it leaves behind blocks the next one. The connection establishes normally, audio is sent and received, and none of it reaches the speaker or the microphone. Nothing reports an error, because as far as every layer above it is concerned everything worked.
It is much more likely on a second or third session in a row than on the first, because the problem is left behind by the previous session. That is also why it can feel random.
This is a long-standing Apple issue, reported across many voice apps for years, and it has no vendor fix. Every app that runs live audio on iOS works around it the same way we do — by rebuilding the audio unit. Ours does that automatically a few seconds into every session, which catches most cases before you notice. The button exists for the ones it misses, because a timer cannot hear silence and you can.
Two things worth knowing
- The web app is not affected. If you would rather not deal with it at all, thirddegree.app runs the same sessions in your browser and does not use the component that causes this.
- Your session is never lost. The repair does not end the session or discard your case material, and it does not consume an extra session from your plan.
Still stuck, or seeing something this page does not describe? Email support and tell us what happened — including whether it was your first session of the day or a later one. That detail helps more than anything else.