Apple Releases Sixth iOS 18.1 Developer Beta With New Control Center Buttons, Sleep Apnea + More
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While Apple released a round of watchOS and tvOS developer betas last week, those leapfrogged the most exciting ones — the iOS, iPadOS, and macOS betas that support the new Apple Intelligence features. However, today, it’s lining them all up again with another set of developer beta releases for all of its platforms.
This includes the sixth developer betas of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS Sequoia 15.1, plus the fourth betas of watchOS 11.1, tvOS 18.1, and visionOS 2.1. The numeric discrepancy comes from the iPhone, iPad, and Mac developer betas getting an early state in late July; if anything, last week’s betas helped Apple’s other devices catch up a bit.
Public betas will undoubtedly follow these new betas within the next day or two. Until then, anyone with a registered developer account — even a free one — can update their devices to the developer betas (Update: the public beta has just arrived — and in record time)
What’s New in iOS 18.1 Beta 6
While Apple Intelligence is the marquee feature of iOS 18.1, it seems Apple has finished adding new AI capabilities for this release and is now focused on polishing other things.
The Apple Intelligence features we expect to see in iOS 18.1 have been seemingly finalized since the third iOS 18.1 developer beta in August, nearly three weeks before iOS 18.0 was released to the public. That was when Apple added the Clean Up tool in the Photos app, joining enhanced search, AI memory creation, Writing Tools, and e-mail and notification summaries from earlier betas.
The developer betas that have arrived since that time have undoubtedly tweaked some of the Apple Intelligence features under the hood but haven’t added any of the new features Apple announced during its June Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), such as Genmoji, Image Playground, or ChatGPT integration. By all reports, those aren’t coming until iOS 18.2 later this year.
Instead, recent developer betas have added improvements for all iOS 18-compatible iPhones, not just the handful that support Apple Intelligence. This includes call recording for all in iOS 18.1 beta 4, plus some Control Center tweaks and Selfie Camera Control for the iPhone 16 in iOS 18.1 beta 5.
Although Call Recording was available in the first iOS 18.1 beta in July, those early developer betas were limited to the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. However, Apple had made it clear from the beginning that call recording was coming as a new iOS 18 feature, not an Apple Intelligence one; only the summarization of call recordings requires AI.
The sixth beta of iOS 18.1 follows the same pattern, adding overall iOS features mostly unrelated to Apple Intelligence. Here’s the rundown of what we’ve found so far:
- New Control Center Connectivity buttons. The last beta added the ability to restore the default Control Center layout with a single tap, plus new discrete buttons for Wi-Fi and VPN, breaking them out of the Connectivity panel. Beta 6 completes this with standalone toggles for AirDrop and Satellite connectivity, effectively letting folks build their own connectivity panel from scratch rather than being stuck with Apple’s predefined layout. Sadly, as with the Wi-Fi and VPN buttons in the last beta, these still can’t be added as Lock Screen controls. However, there’s still time for that to change before the final release.
- Two more new buttons are also available for Measure and Level, which open the built-in Measure app. Unlike the new connectivity buttons, these two can be added to the Lock Screen.
- Apple Music lets you share songs on TikTok. As explained by 9to5Mac, a new button opens the TikTok app with a special card that lets you post a song as a video or photo or send it as a private message. However, there’s more to this than just sharing the music; for instance, the video option lets you record a video of yourself while the song plays in the background.
- Sleep Apnea Detection comes to the betas. This was one of those features in the public release of iOS 18.0 and watchOS 11.0 that hadn’t yet made it into the beta versions. That changes with today’s developer betas for iOS 18.1 and watchOS 11.1. You’ll still need an Apple Watch Ultra 2, Apple Watch Series 9, or Apple Watch Series 10 to use it. There’s no word on whether this has been unlocked in additional countries like Canada, where the feature received later approval.
Several other minor UI tweaks are also included. Some apps show new splash screens to introduce the features coming in iOS 18.1, mainly highlighting things that are old news to anyone who’s already been running the betas. Grouped notifications will show a badge by the icon to show how many notifications are stacked up.
When is iOS 18.1 Coming?
Last month, Apple announced that Apple Intelligence features would be coming to its new iPhone 16 models in October, making it a safe bet that iOS 18.1 will arrive this month.
However, hopes this would be on the front end of October were dashed over the weekend when Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman pegged an October 28 release date in his Power On newsletter:
The company has been clear that Apple Intelligence will be arriving in October as part of the iOS 18.1 operating system. But now I can provide a little more detail on when in the month it’s supposed to arrive: Monday, Oct. 28. That means new iPhone buyers will have to wait a few more weeks to get the most hyped component of their devices. I’m told that Apple is taking its time with the rollout to ensure that major bugs are eliminated and it can support all the new traffic on its AI cloud servers.
Gurman also confirmed that we won’t see any more Apple Intelligence features added between now and the public release of iOS 18.1. AI image generation features and ChatGPT integration are expected to arrive in iOS 18.2, while major Siri upgrades aren’t expected until iOS 18.4 ships in March.