Apple Releases iOS 17.6.1: Here’s Why You Should Update Now
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Even though two parallel cycles of iOS 18 betas are garnering all the attention as we approach Apple’s big fall release of Apple Intelligence and more, the company hasn’t forgotten the rest of the world that’s still patiently cycling along on iOS 17.
In June, Apple began a series of iOS 17.6 betas shortly after the first developer previews of iOS 18 arrived, culminating in a release last month that delivered some new sports features and support for Emergency SOS via satellite in Japan. Of course, small changes are par for the course this late in the game since the next big new features are slated for iOS 18.0 and iOS 18.1, which, unusually, is also running in developer beta now to provide early access to Apple Intelligence features for developers.
However, it seems Apple isn’t finished polishing things up. Today, it released iOS 17.6.1, which includes some important bug fixes for those who use Apple’s Advanced Data Protection features.
Released in iOS 16.2, Advanced Data Protection lets you enable end-to-end encryption for nearly everything in your iCloud account, from photos and notes to your iCloud Backups. It’s an optional feature, so you aren’t using it unless you’ve explicitly switched it on, but once you do so, even Apple won’t be able to access most of your data that’s stored on its iCloud servers. It gets encrypted with a key that only you (and your devices) have.
Of course, the problem with this level of security is that if something goes wrong, you could lose access to your data. Apple has no way of recovering it since it doesn’t know the key, which is why fail-safes such as Account Recovery are in place to give you a way back in if you forget your device passcode or Apple ID password or lose one of your security keys.
However, it turns out that Apple found an issue in iOS 17.6 that could, at the very least, prevent you from switching Advanced Data Protection on or off. By itself, that’s merely annoying, but there’s no way of knowing if that’s all since Apple also says this update includes other “important bug fixes.”
This update includes important bug fixes and addresses an issue that prevents enabling or disabling Advanced Data Protection.
Unlike other recent iOS 17 releases, iOS 17.6.1 doesn’t appear to include fixes for any security problems that could make your iPhone or iPad vulnerable to hackers or malware, suggesting that iOS 17.6 remains secure. The Apple security updates page includes iOS 17.6.1 (and iPadOS 17.6.1), stating that there are no published entries concerning common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs). By contrast, iOS 17.6 fixed over 30 vulnerabilities discovered in the prior release.
Apple has also released iOS 16.7.10 and iPadOS 16.7.10 for older devices that aren’t capable of running iOS/iPadOS 17, with the same fixes related to Advanced Data Protection, along with corresponding macOS Sonoma 14.6.1 and macOS Ventura 13.6.9 updates.
With iOS 18.0 likely less than six weeks away, there’s a good chance that iOS 17.6.1 will be the last update we see for iOS 17, at least in the near future. As with iOS 16.7, Apple will undoubtedly release more patches down the road as new security vulnerabilities inevitably come to light, but it’s highly unlikely we’ll see an iOS 17.7.
