Apple Seeds Final iOS 17.1 Release Candidate to Devs | Here’s What’s Coming

Last week, a French regulatory group effectively leaked an October 24 release date for iOS 17.1 — a date by which Apple had committed to releasing a fix for a European iPhone 12 compliance issue. Today, right on track, Apple has released the final Release Candidate (RC) of iOS 17.1 to developers in preparation for the wider public release next week.

Apple’s release candidates typically come out about a week before the final public release to give developers some lead time to test their apps against the final version before it goes out far and wide. Barring any show-stopping bugs — which has almost never happened in Apple’s 14-year history of iOS beta releases — the RC version becomes the actual public release.

Hence, these RC versions also include Apple’s release notes, giving us an advance peek at the official list of what’s coming in iOS 17.1. While most of what’s there has already been unearthed by folks like us poking through the previous developer betas, there are still a couple of surprises in store, particularly in the area of bug fixes.

New Features Coming in iOS 17.1

Although we’ll have to wait until at least iOS 17.2 before we see all the features Apple has promised for iOS 17, the iOS 17.1 release brings at least one significant new feature to AirDrop along with part of Apple’s bigger plans for Apple Music.

AirDrop

When Apple unveiled iOS 17 in June, it announced two big improvements to AirDrop. First was the ability to start an AirDrop transfer by holding two iPhones near each other; this was paired with a new NameDrop feature that automatically offers to transfer contact information when nothing else is selected.

The second was the ability to continue larger AirDrop transfers over the Internet, so you don’t have to stay in range to finish sending a long 4K video to someone, for instance.

While proximity AirDrop and NameDrop were available in iOS 17.0, AirDrop transfers over the Internet was listed as one of those “coming later this year” features. The good news is that we won’t have to wait much longer, as iOS 17.1 will unlock this. Plus, watchOS 10.1, which should be released at the same time, will add NameDrop capability to the Apple Watch.

Music

We’re still waiting on Collaborative Playlists in Apple Music, but iOS 17.1 brings some other new toys for music fans, including favorites, cover art collections, and song suggestions.

Favorites replaces the old heart icon with a star, but it also expands beyond just loving songs; now you can mark albums and playlists as favorites, and you’ll finally be able to use a filter to display the favorite items in your library.

Apple has also provided a nice library of abstract cover art collections to spruce up your playlists. As the release notes indicate, these also “change colors to reflect the music in your playlist.”

Lastly, you’ll now find a new set of song suggestions at the bottom of each of your playlists, with five items that match the “vibe of your playlist.” You can quickly preview these — even without losing your place while listening to a playlist — and if you like them, you can add them with the tap of the plus button on the right side. There’s also a refresh button in the top corner to give you five more selections.

This is a surprisingly fun new feature I’ve already been using for the past few weeks to round out my playlists.

StandBy

As we found in the second iOS 17.1 beta, Apple has added new options to help those of us with always-on-display-equipped iPhones (the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro models) have more control over when the display turns off.

Rather than simply toggling whether or not to use the always-on display, iOS 17.1 now gives you a third option to never turn the display off when your iPhone is propped up on a charger in StandBy mode. This is only available if you have an iPhone with an always-on display; otherwise, your screen will still turn off after 20 seconds.

Other Fixes and Improvements in iOS 17.1

Apple’s release notes list another list of small but notable improvements in iOS 17.1, including more customizable Photo Shuffle lock screens that will let you choose photos from a specific album — a welcome change for those who find Apple’s smart albums to be a bit too random.

The notes also indicate that iOS 17.1 “addresses an issue where custom and purchased ringtones may not appear as options for your text tone,” but sadly, it doesn’t improve the default app notification sound or provide any way to choose a custom one.

All iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 models also receive more Crash Detection optimizations — just in time for skiing season. Hopefully, this means emergency services will encounter fewer false alarms this year.

Apple doesn’t mention this one in the release notes, but as we discovered in the first beta, iOS 17.1 also brings back smart move-to-folder suggestions in Apple Mail.

Other fixes and improvements include Home key support for Matter locks, more reliable syncing of Screen Time settings across devices, better keyboard responsiveness, fixes for an issue that could cause location privacy settings to reset when pairing an Apple Watch and where incoming caller names may not appear when you’re already on another call.

Lastly, Apple also says that iOS 17.1 “fixes an issue that may cause display image persistence,” which could be in response to recent reports we’ve seen on Apple Discussions and Reddit of “screen burn-in” on the new iPhone 15 Pro models. Since these are unlikely to be actual screen burn-in, which is a permanent condition that takes a much longer time to develop, iOS 17.1 should hopefully address the issue.