Be smart before installing the iOS 18.1 Apple Intelligence Public Beta

Could the iOS 18.1 Public Beta that is available now be more anticipated than the first iOS 18 beta that came out earlier this summer? If you have an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 or iPhone 16 Pro model — and you are not a registered developer — this is your first chance to get the first batch of the critically acclaimed Apple Intelligence Features like the Clean Up tool in Photos to remove unwanted distractions and email and text message summaries. If nothing else, you get the new full-screen Siri animation. If your phone is an iPhone 15 or earlier, you can still try out new features like pausing video while recording and recording phone calls.

But before you go downloading, let me remind you about the “beta” part of “public beta.” Prerelease software isn’t finished yet, and while a public beta means Apple is confident enough to seed it onto thousands of iPhones, the goal is to see how the update performs before rolling it out to millions of iPhones. And while the iOS 8.1 developer beta is pretty stable, you never know what bugs might slip through.

For more information on what iOS 18 brings to iPhone, be sure to check out everything Apple announced during its “Glowtime” event in September and how Apple Intelligence will impact the way we use Apple devices.

A positive word about installing the iOS 18.1 public beta

The public beta is more stable than the developer betas that Apple has been steadily releasing since early June, which are intended for… developers.

But “more stable” doesn’t equal “solid as a rock.” Apple is still adding and changing features in the iOS 18.1 betas, which Apple says will be released in October.

If you decide to install the iOS 18.1 public beta, I recommend doing so on a separate iPhone that isn’t your primary personal phone. iOS 18.1 works with models as old as the iPhone SE (second generation) and the iPhone XR, so reach into your tech drawer and put that forgotten iPhone to work.

Also, make sure you have backups of your data. And if things go wrong, learn how to roll back to iOS 17.

Bugs are part of iOS 18.1 public beta

Now let’s discuss why upgrading to the iOS public beta might be a bad idea.

Software bugs in development are to be expected — and that’s kind of the point. Now is the time for bugs to come to light, so developers can find them and Apple can fix them before the final release. By opening up the public beta to more testers, odd interactions with a much wider group of iPhones and third-party apps will be caught.

Bugs can range across the spectrum. You might encounter issues connecting to Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, or you might experience third-party apps that crash intermittently. Features that work perfectly in iOS 18 might not perform up to par in iOS 18.1, even if they aren’t necessarily tied to new iOS 18.1 features. And runaway background processes can cause the system to run hotter than normal, not only decreasing how long your phone can get on a charge but potentially putting a strain on the battery life itself. To be fair, I’ve never encountered any show-stopping, brick-your-phone bugs in a beta — usually they’re a series of annoyances that grow on you after a while. But these are all completely normal in developer and public betas.

But if you don’t want to deal with bugs and other issues that can make using your phone more difficult, you probably don’t want to install the iOS 18.1 public beta on your primary iPhone.

Your battery life may deteriorate

Did you recently purchase a recommended portable charger for your iPhone? Expect to use it more often if you’re running beta software. Energy efficiency is usually the last thing Apple developers optimize, as the priority at this point is to make sure features work and bugs are stamped out.

An iOS update also triggers a lot of internal indexing, which takes up a lot of power for a few hours or days after installation. For example, the Photos app updates its database of recognized people, scans images for new recognizable objects or scenes for search purposes, and looks for duplicates.

Performance may take a hit

Due in part to the reindexing of gigabytes of data on your phone, the iOS 18.1 public beta almost certainly won’t deliver the performance you’d expect. Processor-intensive apps and games also need to be tuned to work with the new iOS, so stuttering and glitches are expected.

Game Mode is a new feature for iOS (which first appeared in macOS Sonoma) that redirects resources to improve frame rate and Bluetooth latency, potentially making the most demanding games perform better than they would under iOS 17 or iOS 18. However, Game Mode runs at a low level and may be interrupted by beta components.

Not all new iOS 18 features are available yet

We already know that many of the cool Apple Intelligence features won’t be available right away, though iOS 18.1 gives us the chance to experiment with them early.

Such is the development lifecycle: Some features get put on the back burner so others can be finished. Last year, Apple announced two exciting media features, Collaborative Playlists in the Music app and AirPlay in Hotels, that didn’t roll out until January and April 2024, respectively.

I know it’s hard to be patient when future features are just a download away, but I also don’t want you to get burned (like I have in the past).

For more information about iOS 18, check out how the new Passwords app works on all your devices.