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iOS 11 Public Beta 5 Is Out - Here's What You Need To Know

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Apple

It's a week early and early in the morning instead of late in the afternoon (like all the others), but iOS 11 Public Beta 5 is here! David Phelan talked about the new features in the Developer Beta, and judging by the short cycle between the Developer and the Public betas, I imagine they're identical, but there's still plenty of meat left on this bone. Let's dive into what's new, what got fixed, and what's still busted in iOS 11 Public Beta 5.

Features

Anthony Karcz

As David mentioned in his article, lots of new icons have been added as we start circling in on the "fit and finish" portion of the development cycle. The Maps icon is updated (and now includes the new Apple Spaceship...erm..."Park" HQ). The App Store icon, which was already updated, no longer has the pencil and paintbrush of the previous version.

Apple

Those Live wallpapers with the fish? The ones that no one used? They've been flushed. Hopefully, we'll see some new Live wallpapers take their place in the next update.

If you've taken the Airpods plunge (and judging by how often I saw people sporting them when I was walking around Philly a couple of weeks ago, there are a lot of you), your dedication to the Apple brand has been rewarded in iOS 11 Public Beta 5. Now, when you open your Airpods case near a paired device running the beta, you'll get a neat rotating animation (which David mentioned). It will also show you how much charge both your Airpods and their case have left.

Fixes

Remember when Family Sharing was a mess last week? Yeah. Those were harrowing times. Times, when children glared at parents and parents threw their hands into the air, unable to authorize the installation of Cat Quest or Titanfall: Assault. Those times are behind us and Family Sharing should be working as normal with this update.

Also fixed, a super annoying bug where your phone would crash when you deleted a voicemail. Nothing like your phone abusing you for using your phone for phone things. Along those lines, the Call History list is working properly again.

Photos got some love in this update. You can share them with the Photos app on macOS again without it failing. Pics shared with macOS also won't re-orient themselves incorrectly. Oh, and if you have a fancy camera that imports to your phone and you use the RAW+JPG format, your device will maintain the format in this update.

Siri won't linger on CarPlay anymore after she responds to a Message. For a while she would just hang out, creeping on your conversation. It was awkward.

Bugs

That AT&T cellular data bug that was plaguing iPads running the iOS 11 Public Beta? It's still not squashed. So you'll either want to avoid installing the beta or downgrade back to iOS 10 to fix. Having trouble logging into your CitiMobile account or posting a Tweet with photos via Tweetbot? Maybe Audiobus just won't launch at all on your device. Or maybe you've noticed that Siri suddenly has issues when it has to choose between multiple phone numbers for one contact. Yup, those are all new bugs or bugs that have lingered from Public Beta 4. If any of them are show stoppers for you, you'll want to downgrade to iOS 10.

This early Public Beta is a good sign. It means that Apple is squashing bugs quicker and testing out new code faster. It might not point to a quicker iOS 11 release (I still think that's happening next month), but at the very least it means that the final version will be even more stable.

Incidentally, if you're looking to dive into the Public Beta process for the first time, you can always check out my guide.

But if you're already on the beta train, make a backup (always make a backup!), go to Settings, dive into the General settings, and check Software Update. Your new beta awaits! See you back here in a week or so with everything you need to know about Public Beta 6.

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