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iOS 12 developer beta 8 is now available to download

Published Aug 15th, 2018 1:09PM EDT
iOS 12 developer beta 8
Image: Apple

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On Monday, Apple released and then quickly pulled the seventh developer beta of iOS 12, following numerous reports of major performance issues. It was a slightly embarrassing moment for Apple’s software team, especially given how close we are to the general release of iOS 12, but at least there’s good news: We get to do the whole thing over again today, just with developer beta 8 rather than developer beta 7.

The performance issues appeared to break simple things, like app launches. On my iPhone X, I found that apps would take ten times longer than usual to load when launched, and the lock screen and system animations appeared to be frequently hanging. Reports of the exact nature and cause of the problem varied: Some users found that the problems went away after simply waiting for an hour, and some people said that performance issues only affected the over-the-air update, not the version that you can download directly from Apple’s servers.

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, there was no public beta release on Monday, so anyone on the public channel will have been spared the horrors of the developer beta.

In any case, iOS 12 developer beta 8 is now available — as the name would suggest — to developers. If you have an Apple developer account but you’re not yet on the developer profile, 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.

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
Chris Mills
Chris Mills News Editor

Chris Mills has been a news editor and writer for over 15 years, starting at Future Publishing, Gawker Media, and then BGR. He studied at McGill University in Quebec, Canada.