The next major version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 17, will be announced on Monday as part of Apple’s WWDC presentation. But when can you expect to get your hands on with iOS 17? iOS 17 release date has not been officially confirmed quite yet, but the company usually sticks to a familiar pattern on the calendar …
Ahead of June 5, rumors are rife about the Apple Reality Pro headset … or whatever it ends up being called. But WWDC is also the time for Apple to unveil the new software features for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac for the coming year.
For iOS 17, in fact, Apple has already shared details about new accessibility features coming later this year, including a new simplified alternate app launcher layout and Live Speech feature using your own Personal Voice.
But the remainder of the consumer features will be announced on Monday. We expect to see a more sophisticated always-on display view when the iPhone is docked, similar to a smart display like the Amazon Echo Show, a new journalling app, new Wallet app and location sharing features, additional Dynamic Island functionality for iPhone 14 Pro (and soon, iPhone 15) owners, and likely some other surprises that have not yet been rumored. However, with Apple’s focus being primarily on the XR headset this year, iOS 17 probably won’t have anything as huge as the iOS 16 Lock Screen redesign or iOS 14 home screen widgets update.
When will iOS 17 be released
In terms of release date, we can expect that iOS 17 will be available as a developer beta seed following the keynote on Monday. That means around 1 PM PST iOS 17 beta 1 will be available for developers to install on their test devices. Developer seeds are available to registered Apple developers only.
Assuming Apple sticks to its predictable schedule, a public beta of iOS 17 will follow a few weeks after that, around the end of June or the first few weeks of July. For comparison, the first public beta of iOS 16 was released on July 11, 2022. Anyone can sign up to be a part of the Apple Beta Software Program.
iOS 17 will then go through several more rounds of beta seeds over the summer months, and will be officially released to the world, alongside the launch of the iPhone 15 lineup in the fall. This timing almost always lands around the second or third week of September.
Apple typically releases the next version of watchOS simultaneously with iOS, but be aware that iPadOS 17 and macOS 14 releases may not ship until a little later, usually in October.
Before any of that though, iOS 16.6 is currently in beta testing phase — including minor improvements like the addition of iMessage Contact Key verification — and will probably ship by the end of June.
Stay tuned to 9to5Mac as we bring you full coverage of all the WWDC announcements, and hands-on with iOS 17 as soon as it is available.
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