Last week, Apple suffered through the indignity of a messed-up beta launch, but it’s lost no time getting back on the highly metaphorical beta horse. iOS 12 developer beta 9 is now available to download; if you’re already on the beta channel, you probably know how to get the over-the-air update, but if this is your first foray into the world of beta, read on below.
Last Monday, Apple launched iOS 12 developer beta 7, and then pulled it right after since it was rendering some devices unusable. A more stable version, iOS 12 developer beta 8, followed shortly after, and Apple is sticking with the fast update cycle by pushing out iOS 12 developer beta 9 today.
iOS 12 developer beta 9 is currently available — as the name would suggest — to developers. If you have an Apple developer account but you’re not yet on the developer , you can hit this link on your iPhone or iPad and you’ll download the developer profile, which will let you install the iOS 12 developer beta as an over-the-air update. If you prefer to do things the old-fashioned way, you can visit the link on your PC or Mac, and use iTunes to manually update. If you don’t have a paid Apple developer account, you can also download iOS 12 beta profiles here.
Performance issues are, of course, the name of the game with beta versions of any software, but particularly iOS. Apple specifically warns people on the developer beta channel not to install the software on daily-driver devices — advice that people routinely ignore, of course, but you can’t blame Apple for not warning you!
The slightly safer option, as always, is to stick on the public release version of the iOS betas. Public betas are typically the same as the developer betas, just launched one week later so that any glaring bugs can be nipped in the bud. Notably, Apple spotted the performance updates in last week’s beta before the launch of the public beta and were able to fix them, so people on the public channel were spared the device-wrecking update.
Apple is making iOS 12 available to every device that can run iOS 11, which means iPhones all the way back to the iPhone 5S. Not sure if that includes you? The full list is below:
- iPhone X
- iPhone 8
- iPhone 8 Plus
- iPhone 7
- iPhone 7 Plus
- iPhone 6s
- iPhone 6s Plus
- iPhone 6
- iPhone 6 Plus
- iPhone SE
- iPhone 5s
- 12.9-inch iPad Pro 2nd generation
- 12.9-inch iPad Pro 1st generation
- 10.5-inch iPad Pro
- 9.7-inch iPad Pro
- 10.5-inch iPad
- iPad Air 2
- iPad Air
- iPad 5th generation
- iPad mini 4
- iPad mini 3
- iPad mini 2
- iPod touch 6th generation
