Apple releases fifth iOS 14.7, iPadOS 14.7, tvOS 14.7, and watchOS 7.6 betas

Apple has seeded the fifth round of betas for its upcoming iOS 14.7, iPadOS 14.7, tvOS 14.7, and watchOS 7.6 updates to both developers and public testers.

The newest builds, released Thursday, can be downloaded from the Apple Developer Center for those enrolled into the test program, or through an over-the-air update on devices running the beta software. The public beta versions were released concurrently, and can be downloaded from the Apple Public Beta Program portal.

The fifth round comes about a week after Apple seeded the fourth round of beta builds back on June 29.

Based on the beta builds this far, it appears that iOS 14.7, iPadOS 14.7, tvOS 14.7, and watchOS 7.6 will be minor updates focused on security fixes and stability improvements. Thus far, no major user-facing features have been discovered.

In addition to the betas released on Thursday, Apple is also beta testing its next major software updates, including iOS 15 and macOS Monterey.

Both 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.

Keep up with everything Apple in the weekly AppleInsider Podcast — and get a fast news update from AppleInsider Daily. Just say, "Hey, Siri," to your HomePod mini and ask for these podcasts, and our latest HomeKit Insider episode too.

If you want an ad-free main AppleInsider Podcast experience, you can support the AppleInsider podcast by subscribing for $5 per month through Apple's Podcasts app, or via Patreon if you prefer any other podcast player.

6 Comments

lkrupp 10521 comments · 19 Years

About 3 years ago

Sometimes it’s not a good idea to install the official release either. Wait awhile. Just saying

mpantone 2245 comments · 18 Years

Due to Apple's deteriorating software QA, I stopped upgrading to the new macOS and iOS versions on release day a couple of years ago.

This year was a good example of my current M.O. I waited until late March to install iOS 14. I waited until late April to install macOS Big Sur (I skipped Crapalina completely).

And OS dogchow doesn't just come from Cupertino, CA. It's also available from Redmond, WA as well.

On my Windows PCs I expect to try upgrading my first PC to Windows 11 about a year from now, about six month after Windows 11 debuts.

I wish I could just install the security patches rather than be forced to accept a bunch of half baked, mostly broken feature "enhancements."

But that's the lamentable state of software engineering in 2021. Very low standards.

chris-net 24 comments · 4 Years

mpantone said:

Due to Apple's deteriorating software QA, I stopped upgrading to the new macOS and iOS versions on release day a couple of years ago.

This year was a good example of my current M.O. I waited until late March to install iOS 14. I waited until late April to install macOS Big Sur (I skipped Crapalina completely).

I'm running OS 12 b2 on my 2016 MBP and its fine, actually slightly better than Sur that was in its turn far better than Crapalina.
I'm also running IOS 15, was on my air 2 that was slow but now on my 2021 11" pro and its fine.

Full disclosure, I occasionally have issues with "Private Relay" on os12 & IOS15 but its easy enough to turn off & I see aggressive battery drain on my iPhone X running iOS 14.7 beta but a reload 5 days ago has sorted that, would have got a boot today anyway with the update.

Thanks but no thanks. I have enough issues with released software (now Big Sur). My music library is a mess since the conversion from the iTunes music library was bungled by the new Music app. Also the latter routinely forgets what songs I have in iTunes Match forcing me to redownload gigabytes of files.

And the native Mail app now routinely flags messages from long-time senders as spam even though the Mojave Mail client worked normally.

So yeah, there's not a snowball's chance in hell that I'm going to touch a macOS beta. (Barfs.)

In fact, Apple couldn't PAY me to run their beta software.

But hey, enjoy the beta program!