Apple Releases iOS 11 Developer Beta 2
- Paul Thurrott
- Jun 22, 2017
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A week ahead of an expected public beta, Apple has released iOS 11 Developer Beta 2, adding new features like Do Not Disturb While Driving.
Apple announced iOS 11 at its WWDC 2017 conference earlier this month, and while it’s a fairly modest update on iPhones, it’s a major change for iPad Pro, with Apple adding several new productivity and multitasking features.
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I installed the first developer beta on my iPhone, iPad mini, and newly-purchased iPad Pro, as I usually do, but I’ve found it a bit buggier than with previous iOS beta releases. (OK, it was a lot buggier; I’ve had to wipe out the iPad mini install twice already.)
This week, I’m traveling in Haarlem, The Netherlands, so naturally, I’m now installing Beta 2 on the iPhone and iPad Pro, because what could go wrong. In the meantime, here’s a peek at some of features and improvements Apple made in this release.
Dock improvements. As expected, Apple now lets you configure how the right side of the Dock works on iPad; you may recall that I complained it was just a dumb most-recently-used set of app icons. Now, you can turn off this area of the Dock if you want. And I do.
Do Not Disturb While Driving. One of the best new features that Apple showed off at WWDC is now available for testing. This feature will prompt you to be enabled when you connect to the Bluetooth in your car.
Control Center improvements. Now, you can disable Control Center access from within apps so that you can only swipe up from the bottom of the screen to display it from the Home screens.
Safari improvements. You can now enable experimental features like Constant Properties, CSS Spring Animations, WebGPU, Web Animations, and more in Apple’s web browser.
Save to Files. A new Save to Files quick action icon replaces the old Add to iCloud Drive option, letting you save files to the Files app from any app.
Files improvements. In addition to Save to Files, the Files app now displays third-party cloud storage provider sources like Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive.
Apple’s developer-focused release notes list a number of fixed bugs, too, and there are of course some known issues as well.
Apple is expected to issue the iOS public beta next week.