Apple Releases First Public Beta of iOS 17.6

Apple today seeded the first betas of upcoming iOS 17.6 and iPadOS 17.6 updates to public beta testers, with the betas coming a few days after the initial iOS and iPadOS 17.6 developer betas.

iOS 17
Public beta testers can get the beta by opening up the Settings app, going to the Software Update section, tapping on the "Beta Updates" option, and toggling on the iOS 17 or iPadOS 17 Public Beta. Signing up on Apple's beta testing website is required.

The new additions Apple promised for ‌iOS 17‌ have all been implemented at this point, so it is not clear what will be included in iOS 17.6, and no features were discovered in the developer beta.

With Apple now shifting its focus to iOS 18, it is likely that iOS 17.6 will include bug fixes and other under-the-hood improvements.

Apple has also seeded the first public betas of upcoming watchOS 10.6 and tvOS 17.6 updates.

Related Roundups: iOS 17, iPadOS 17
Related Forums: iOS 17, iPadOS 17

Top Rated Comments

Böhme417 Avatar
6 days ago at 10:31 am

iOS 17.6 and succeeding updates could just be security fixes and under the hood improvements... Very little chance of new features since majority of focus is on iOS 18...
Good. I need them to iron out all the weird little issues I started getting in 17.5.1. I never would have thought an X.X.X release would cause so many new problems.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Reeneman Avatar
6 days ago at 10:43 am
Why did you guys wait for so long?
iOS 17 haven’t been that terrible to wait for 10 months.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Reeneman Avatar
6 days ago at 10:55 am

Yeah I'm hoping these can fix the bugs I have all over the place in iOS17. It still feels like this is a .0 or .1 release with how many issues still exist. Usually they (generally) had them ironed out this late.
What kind of bugs? Not going to protect Apple here but also annoyed by people who claiming for huge „bugs“ the whole time. An OS will never be 100% perfect.
You will neither find this with iOS 18, 19.2, 20.4 or whatever.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Danilamak Avatar
6 days ago at 11:39 am

I'm using my Logitech mouse a lot. Left mouse button just stops working until I completely restart my iPad.
Shortcuts simply stop working, until I restart the ipad.
Wierd vague system behaviour when rotating the screen.
Widgets stop working during the day.
Network problems, where my other devices have no problems at all, until I restart the device.
I use dual sim on my iPhone 15 pro: it's a pain in ios17, I have to restart multiple times, otherwise no network is found. Sometimes the network stack just crashes. All in all since iOS 17, working (I work on my iPad) has been a big pain in the you-know-what.
+ stage manager crashes a lot
+ language management is a mess, keyboard showing that i type in English but in reality it’s other language
+ spotlight unpredictable misses results
+ FaceTime crashes when i share screen
+ keyboard somehow stops from entering words in the same time system keys works fine

RESART RESTART RESTART
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
locoboi187 Avatar
6 days ago at 12:46 pm

I am a bit concerned that this beta will not be as fully vetted as previous iOS17 updates. Seems like the bulk of the beta community will be concentrating on the iOS18 beta.
It’s like this nearly every year
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
CaptainFS Avatar
6 days ago at 11:22 am

What kind of bugs? Not going to protect Apple here but also annoyed by people who claiming for huge „bugs“ the whole time. An OS will never be 100% perfect.
You will neither find this with iOS 18, 19.2, 20.4 or whatever.
I'm using my Logitech mouse a lot. Left mouse button just stops working until I completely restart my iPad.
Shortcuts simply stop working, until I restart the ipad.
Wierd vague system behaviour when rotating the screen.
Widgets stop working during the day.
Network problems, where my other devices have no problems at all, until I restart the device.
I use dual sim on my iPhone 15 pro: it's a pain in ios17, I have to restart multiple times, otherwise no network is found. Sometimes the network stack just crashes. All in all since iOS 17, working (I work on my iPad) has been a big pain in the you-know-what.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)