The Worldwide Developers Conference will take place in a few days and we hope to know everything about Apple’s new operating systems. With a heavy emphasis on AI and many other features, we expect iOS 18 to be one of the biggest iOS releases in years.
If you want to try it before it releases this fall, you’ll need to install the beta. We expect the developer beta to be available immediately after the June 10 keynote, while the first public beta will arrive a few weeks later in July. If you want to get it back as soon as possible, here’s what you need to do to prepare.
Back up your iPhone to your Mac or Windows PC
The first iOS betas are always full of bugs. New features are broken or missing, and even some things that haven’t changed may stop working. Important applications may become unresponsive or crash frequently. Battery life can be terrible. There’s a reason why developer betas start weeks before the public beta: they’re intended for developers to update their apps with new frameworks and APIs, and to test whether the new operating system will support them. broken.
It’s best to install the beta on an iPhone other than the one you use daily, but if you don’t have one, there are steps you can take to easily restore iOS 17 if things go horribly wrong.
So first backup your iPhone, using a encrypted backup to your local computer instead of standard iCloud backup. This makes it easier to roll back to an earlier version of iOS, which isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. You will need to erase your iPhone, put it in recovery mode, reinstall the current version of iOS 17, and then restore your backup.
- Connect your iPhone and your computer with a cable.
- In the Finder sidebar on your Mac, select your iPhone. (On a Windows PC, you’ll need iTunes: launch it and click the iPhone button at the top left of the iTunes window.)
- At the top of the Finder window, click General. (In iTunes, click Summary.)
- Select Back up all your iPhone data to this Mac. (On iTunes: Back up now)
- To encrypt your backup data and protect it with a password, select Encrypt local backup.
- Click Back Up Now.
Sign up for a free developer account
You no longer need a $100/year paid developer account to install the developer beta. This fee is only required to manage App Store submissions etc., but you can install the developer beta with a free developer account.
Go to the Apple Developer site for registration details. You’ll need to sign in with an Apple ID that has two-factor authentication enabled and provide information like your full name and address.
When you go to Settings > General > Software updates and select the Beta updates In the drop-down menu, you should see available developer updates. It may take a while after registering a developer account for this to appear, and you may even need to restart your iPhone. So sign up for your developer account early if you want to be ready as soon as iOS 18 is released.
Sign up for the public beta (and wait)
If the prospect of running the buggy developer beta makes you nervous and you want to run the slightly less buggy public beta instead, you can sign up on the Apple Beta site.
Go to the site, click the Register button, log in to your Apple ID and agree to the terms. Once you do that, you should see the Public Beta options when you navigate to Settings > General > Software updates and select the Beta updates scrolling menu.
The first public beta of a major new version of iOS usually arrives in July, after two or three developer betas. This is also going to be buggy, but not as difficult as these early versions from the developers.
Expect a challenging experience!
Running beta builds of a new iOS release is not like beta running a mid-release release. The first beta versions of iOS 18 will be a lot rougher than the iOS 18.3 beta. Especially early developer betas, which are often quite incomplete.
You can expect poor battery life, apps that crash unexpectedly or don’t work at all, and new features that don’t work properly.
We can’t stress enough how bad it is to run the first developer beta on a device you use every day, unless you have a backup device or a lot of patience. It’s best to run the update on a secondary iPhone if possible, or at least update your old iPhone so it’s ready to become your daily driver during the beta process.
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