If you went to bed last night thinking that maybe this week there wouldn't be any new iOS 11 Public Beta, then you've got a nice surprise waiting for you in the Settings app this morning.
iOS 11 Public Beta 7 is now live and should have downloaded to your iPhone overnight. There are no major feature updates in this one, just a lot (and I mean a lot) of bug fixes. Here's how to update the right way.
Installing Public Beta 7
- Before you do anything, make sure you iPhone is fully charged. If it's not, it could potentially die in the middle of a backup and lose your data or worse, in the middle of the update and brick your iPhone. If your battery is low and you don't want to wait, plug your iPhone in first before proceeding.
- Open the Settings app and go to Accounts and Settings > iCloud first. Select iCloud Backup and click Back Up Now. Wait on this screen until it displays that the backup is successfully finished (if you just woke up and have a backup already from overnight, then you can safely skip this step).
- Now you're ready for the main event. Go back to the main Settings menu and select General > Software Update. Public Beta 7 will be waiting for you. Click Download & Install or Install Now, depending on if your iPhone already downloaded the update.
Installation takes about 5 minutes. Once your iPhone has rebooted, you'll be ready to try out iOS 11 Public Beta 7.
What's New in Public Beta 7
Not a whole lot, honestly. Though one of the first things I noticed was that tapping Learn More when you try to open a 32-bit app now takes you to the Settings (presumably so that you can run the Applications check I detailed yesterday). Overall, however, there's no new art, no new icons, no UI fit and finish items in this update. This release is a straight up bug hunt.
Here are the ones that have been fixed that caught my eye.
Did the Phone app keep crashing on you after you deleted a voicemail (I haven't personally encountered this one, but have heard from some who have)? That should be working as expected now. You may still have to exit out of the app after listening to a voicemail to get the Greetings or Edit buttons to work.
If you're trying out the new Messages filtering feature (you can enable it by selecting Settings > Messages > Filter Unknown Senders), your iPhone will now properly deliver those messages marked as spam to the Unknown Senders list. Speaking of Messages, syncing to iCloud is back! You'll just need to reboot your iOS device to re-enable the feature (which, since you had to do that to install this iOS 11 update, you should be good to go).
Fellow iOS keyboard aficionados - your last keyboard selection should now remain selected when you activate the keyboard again. Additionally, if you don't want to allow your third-party keyboards full access, they should still work (previously you had to provide them with full access in order to be selectable).
Those of you hit by the bug where you couldn't connect to your cell network after rebooting, that's been fixed. The issues with purchasing a prepaid data plan on the iPad, when on a cell connection still persist (thankfully, it's a very specific set of circumstances and easily worked around).
If you've been having an annoying problem when you import your iPhone photos to macOS (namely, that the orientation was all screwy), that's been fixed with this release. Also, you can share Live Photos again via AirDrop without it crashing the Photos app.
And those are the biggies! There is, of course, more granular work being done on the iOS code base, but those don't really affect those of us in the Public Betas.
What's Next for the iOS 11 Public Beta?
With the September 12 announcement date for the iPhone 8 leaked, I'm going to hazard a guess that next week we'll see the Gold Master release for iOS 11. Apple may sneak out one more Public Beta, but it will likely be all bug fixes with no major features or UI elements introduced (adding a major feature this close to release is just asking for trouble). So while the next update you see will be a bit more stable and have fewer bugs, Public Beta 7 is practically the end of the road for the iOS 11 betas.
If you've been waiting to jump on to the iOS 11 Public Beta program until there was a more stable version, this is a great point to dive in. You can read my guide to get started.
Alternately, if you've had enough testing and you just want a few more weeks with your old 32-bit apps before iOS 11 kills them off, you can go back to iOS 10 using this guide.
See you next week with either Public Beta 8 or the final iOS 11 Gold Master!
