Malcolm Owen
Apple is now on its third round of developer betas, with new builds of macOS 10.15.5, tvOS 13.4.5, and watchOS 6.2.5 now available to developers.
The latest builds can be acquired from the Apple Developer Center for participants in the Developer Beta program, as well as via an over-the-air update for hardware already used for beta software. Public beta versions of the developer builds are usually issued within a few days of their counterparts, and can be acquired from the Apple Beta Software Program site.
The third round including the renamed iOS 13.5 and iPadOS 13.5 takes over from the builds provided by Apple on April 15. The first batch of builds were issued on March 31 for iOS 13.4.5, iPadOS 13.4.5, and tvOS 13.4.5, while watchOS 6.2.5's build appeared on April 1.
Release notes for the builds haven't yet provided details of what major feature changes were made in each operating system, beyond the first support for coronavirus Exposure Notification in Wednesday's iOS 13.5 beta, with Apple otherwise only advising of the usual bug fixes and improvements. Given the version numbering, as well as relative proximity to WWDC 2020, it is plausible that it largely consists of a maintenance release.
Alone, the software hooks in iOS 13.5 for Exposure Notification don't do anything on their own, and require an app for functionality, which is not available at this time.
Examination of previous builds uncovered an option for Apple Music subscribers to share what they're listening to in Facebook and Instagram stories.
AppleInsider, and Apple itself, strongly recommend users don't install the betas on to "mission-critical" or primary devices, as there is the remote possibility of data loss or other issues. Instead, testers should install betas onto secondary or non-essential devices, and to make sure there are sufficient backups of important data before updating.
Find any changes in the new betas? Reach out to us on Twitter at @AppleInsider or @Andrew_OSU, or send Andrew an email at andrew@AppleInsider.com.
Update: Apple has released a public beta version of iOS 13.5 for testing.
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10 Comments
Mojave maxed out at 10.14.6. I wonder where Catalina will end up with WWDC in June (maybe virtual WWDC). Could 10.15.5 be it or will we get a last 10.15.6 before the next macOS is announced? On my late 2013 27” iMac 14,2 Catalina is running really smooth and stable. Not much to complain about.
Brand spanking new MacBook Pro 16" crashes on wake--every time--when power nap is enabled (in process of getting replaed). Here's hoping the update will address this issue. Apparently I'm not the only one (check out the comments): https://youtu.be/yAAHjE5U6Ow
I'm just hoping that there really is a bug in watchos (or iOS?) that's fixed in this next version. For whatever reason my S2 Watch has been very intermittent with alerts since 6.2. Nothing else has changed, but I can get an alert for a message and then 10 minutes later I'll look at my phone and have 5 messages with zero alerts on/from my watch. There don't seem to be any other reports of this from what I could tell. Restoring (reinstalling) both the phone and the watch didn't help... (and like others, 6.2 and 6.2.1 was NOT simple to install on my watch) [/rant]