If you can’t wait until fall for iOS 18 — which Apple recently unveiled at WWDC 2024 and made available immediately, but only for developers — then it’s easy to get a free developer account and install the beta on your iPhone. But, you should go into it with realistic expectations of how brittle prerelease versions, especially the first ones, can be. (If you already installed the iOS 18 beta and are having second thoughts, don’t worry. You can revert back to iOS 17.)
The good news is Apple’s beta releases get progressively more stable over the months leading up to their expected fall releases, starting with the first public betas, which don’t require a developer account and can be installed by anyone with an Apple Beta account. It’s a great way to try new features of iOS 18, such as customizable home and lock screens, text message formatting, texting via satellite and the redesigned Photos app, (though we don’t expect Apple Intelligence features to appear until later in the year).
If you’re looking forward to downloading the iOS 18 public beta, here’s when you can expect Apple to make it available.
When will the iOS 18 public beta be available?
If you’re itching to install the updated public beta of iOS 18, the Apple Beta page frustratingly states that it and the other operating system betas are “Coming Soon.” Not much more helpful, Apple says in a press release that, “A public beta will be available through the Apple Beta Software Program next month at beta.apple.com.” But Apple has been providing public betas each year since 2015 with iOS 8.3, and those betas have consistently appeared roughly three to four weeks after the first developer betas.
That means the iOS 18 public beta could approximately arrive as early as July 8, 2024.
Here’s when the previous public releases first dropped:
- iOS 17 public beta: July 12, 2023
- iOS 16 public beta: July 11, 2022
- iOS 15 public beta: June 30, 2021
- iOS 14 public beta: July 9, 2020
What about the other public betas?
iOS tends to generate the most interest, but Apple also releases public betas of its other operating systems around the same time. We expect to see iPad OS 18, WatchOS 11, TVOS 18 and even HomePod software 18 to appear on or near the same date as iOS 18.
The MacOS public beta, on the other hand, sometimes appears on a different schedule. But, the last two releases, Sonoma and Ventura, kept pace with iOS:
- MacOS Sonoma public beta: July 11, 2023
- MacOS Ventura public beta: July 12, 2022
- MacOS Monterey public beta: July 7, 2021
- MacOS Big Sur public beta: Aug. 10, 2020
We wouldn’t be surprised if the MacOS Sequoia public beta also arrives as early as July 8, 2024, or perhaps the following week.
Where’s Vision OS?
Notably out of sight on the Apple Beta page is Vision OS 2 for the Vision Pro. Last year, Apple did not release a public beta of Vision OS, so it’s not yet clear if one will arrive this year before the Vision OS 2 release.
For more on what Apple’s up to, we compared Apple’s Find My Network and Google’s Find My Device and what we think might be iOS 18’s most underrated feature.
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