iOS 9, OS X El Capitan And WatchOS 2 Betas Available For Developers

Soon after the WWDC 2015 keynote, Apple released the first developer betas for iOS 9, Mac OS X El Capitan and watchOS 2. If you’re a registered developer for Apple and would like to experience the new softwares, you can now download the betas and try them for yourself.

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iOS 9 brings plenty of under-the-hood improvements to the mobile OS, but nothing much on the surface.

The first iOS 9 beta is now available for developers to download. It includes improvements to Siri, Spotlight search and several other inbuilt iOS apps. Battery life is also said to be improved in iOS 9 and iPad users will get a split screen multitasking feature.

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You’ll need an iOS 8 device to update to the iOS 9 beta. If you’re not a developer, you should probably not download this beta as there will be plenty of bugs.

Apple also seeded the first developer beta of OS X 10.11 El Capitan. The Mac OS update also includes improved Spotlight search, a split-screen mode and updated stock apps such as Safari, Notes etc.

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Once again, we recommend that only registered developers download and install the latest OS X 10.11 beta.

Finally, Apple Watch developers were also given the new watchOS 2 beta 1 update.

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watchOS 2 includes native apps, new faces, custom complications and an Activation lock. You’ll need to upgrade to iOS 9 beta to be able to use the new watchOS 2 beta.

All the three betas are now available to download from Apple’s developer portal. The final versions of iOS 9, OS X El Capitan and watchOS 2 will see a fall launch.

Update #1: iOS 9 Beta 3 Seeded To Developers, Includes Apple Music And News

The third beta of iOS 9 has been released for the developers, almost two weeks after the second one. A month ago, Apple announced iOS 9 at the 2015 WWDC.

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iOS 9 beta 3 carries the build number 13A4293f and can be downloaded via the OTA update system or from Apples’ iOS developer portal.

If you’re a registered developer, you should probably update to the latest beta to test it out. The third beta includes Apple Music and also the News app that was announced during WWDC 2015.

The News app is similar to Flipboard and provides stories and news based on a users interests and preferences. The beta also features a new 2-factor authentication system, 4×4 app arrangement in folders on the iPad and new Photo albums for Selfies and Screenshots.

Here are the full release notes for iOS 9 beta 3:

Accessories

Known issue: Lighting video dongles don’t work with this beta.

Activation Lock

Fixed in Beta 3
Your iPhone may indicate that Activation Lock is turned on for your Apple Watch when it is not.

App Extensions

Known Issue: Debugging an action or sharing extension can cause the extension to be missing in the UIActivityViewController object.
Workaround: Go to the More list and go back to show the extension again.

App Store

Note: iOS 9 enforces the UILaunchImages requirement; apps can no longer declare the same launch image to support different interface orientations.
Known Issue: Users might be prompted twice for credentials on the first In-App Purchase.

Apple ID

Note: Beginning with this beta, some users will be offered the option to upgrade their Apple ID to use two-factor authentication. For more information about two-factor authentication see developer.apple.com/support/two-factor-authentication. Two-factor authentication is not supported on iOS 9 betas prior to beta 3.
Known Issues: Attempting to create a new Apple ID via Game Center may cause a crash. iForgot links may work intermittently.
Workaround: Please try again.
If you upgrade your Apple ID to use two-factor authentication, iTunes purchases on Mac and Windows and store purchases on Apple TV will require you to append a six-digit verification code to the end of your password on every purchase. The six-digit code will display automatically on your iOS 9 or OS X El Capitan devices, or can be sent to your trusted phone number via a text message or phone call.
If your Apple ID uses two-factor authentication, you may not be able to sign in to services that use Apple ID on iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan beta installations earlier than beta 3.
If you disable two-factor authentication and set a new password at iForgot.apple.com, the password requirements are not indicated so your password may not be accepted.
Workaround: Make sure your password meets these requirements:
Have at least one lowercase letter
Have at least one uppercase letter
Have at least one number
Your password must not contain more than two consecutive identical characters
Not be the same as the account name
Be at least 8 characters
Not be a common password
You cannot manage your two-factor authentication trusted devices at appleid.apple.com.
Workaround: You can find and manage trusted devices in Settings > iCloud > yourName > Devices.
Removing a device from your account removes it as a trusted device for two-factor authentication, but will not sign out of any services or permanently remove it from the device list.
Workaround: To fully remove a device, click Remove From Account then sign out of iCloud in device Settings of the device you want to remove.
If you enter an incorrect verification code for a two-factor authentication account in Setup Assistant, it may hang.
Workaround: Press the Home button and go back to start setup again.
During Setup Assistant, tapping Cancel on the prompt that prompts you to enter the code for two-factor authentication will result in getting stuck at the login screen.
Workaround: Press the Home button and go back to start setup again.
Apps that use app-specific passwords cause multiple notifications if your account uses two-factor authentication.
Workaround: Disable the app in this beta.

Audio

Known Issue: The OpenAL framework is not available in this beta.

AVFoundation

Notes: The canUseNetworkResourcesForLiveStreamingWhilePaused property has been added to AVPlayerItem. The default value is NOfalse for apps linked on or after iOS 9.0 or OS X 10.11, but YEStrue for apps that were linked earlier. To minimize power usage, set this property to NOfalse if you do not need playback state to stay up to date while paused.
AVQueuePlayer now supports a mixture of file-based media and HTTP Live Streaming media in its queue. Prior to this, you had to ensure that all items in the queue were of the same type. For apps linked against iOS 9 or later, the media interruption behavior for AV(Queue)Player has changed.
Before iOS 9, apps could interrupt other media-playing clients by associating or adding AVPlayerItem to AVPlayer or by modifying the time or date of the current AVPlayerItem (using the seekToTime: or seekToDate: methods). In iOS 9, these operations interrupt only when AVPlayer object’s playback rate is changed to a non-zero value through the rate property or play method.
Picture in Picture playback might stop and the Picture in Picture button might disappear when using AVPlayerViewController for video playback and replacing the underlying AVPlayer object’s current item using replaceCurrentItemWithPlayerItem:.
The AVPictureInPictureController interface and the cancelPictureInPicture method are deprecated.
Calendar
Fixed in Beta 3
Calendar Time to Leave alerts may not be sent.

Camera

Known Issue: You can’t take photos in the Camera app using the side volume buttons with this beta.

CBCentralManager

Note: The retrievePeripherals: and retrieveConnectedPeripherals methods were deprecated in iOS 7.0 and removed in iOS 9.0. Apps that use these methods will crash on launch or upon pairing an accessory.

FaceTime

Fixed in Beta 3: In this beta, FaceTime calls do not connect on iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, or iPad Air 2.

Family Sharing

Known Issues: Adding a family member inline fails.
Workaround: Use invite to add family members.
Ask To Buy notifications don’t respond when tapped.
File Providers
Known Issue
On certain devices, the Document Picker is not displayed. Instead, you just see a white screen.

Foundation

Note: There is new Foundation API that can be used to detect if the device is in Low Power Mode. See the updated Energy Efficiency Guide for iOS Apps for details.
Horizontal location constraints should consistently reference either left/right or leading/trailing attributes. For apps linked against the iOS 9 SDK, NSLayoutConstraint will throw an exception if you attempt to create a constraint between a leading/trailing attribute and a left/right attribute.

GLKit

Known Issue: GLKMesh and GLKMeshBuffer objects initialize incorrectly in this beta, which limits the use of GLKit with Model I/O.

Handoff

Known Issue: Handoff does not work with an iOS 9 device that does not have a passcode set.

HealthKit

Known Issue: In rare circumstances, it is possible for the health database to be deleted during the upgrade to the beta.
Workaround: To make sure the health database is not lost, make an encrypted iTunes backup prior to installing this beta.
Although keeping the device unlocked for the duration of the upgrade process reduces the risk of the database being destroyed, it’s recommended that you create a backup so that you can recover the database if you encounter this issue.
HomeKit
Fixed in Beta 3: Accessories that support multiple communication paths to HomeKit may appear duplicated.
Location-based event triggers do not work in Simulator.
After using HomeKit accessories or developing with the HomeKit framework, backing up to iTunes will result in an unrestorable backup.
iCloud Backup
Fixed in Beta 3: If you have two-factor authentication enabled, signing into your iTunes account while restoring from an iCloud backup may get stuck sending your verification code.
Known Issue: In rare cases, restoring from an iCloud backup will not restore your applications.
Workaround: In Settings > General > Reset, choose Erase All Contents and Settings, and then re-attempt the restore.

iCloud Drive

Fixed in Beta 3: Tapping an iCloud Drive document in search results doesn’t do anything.

Instant HotSpot

Fixed in Beta 3: Some devices crash on connection to Instant Hotspot.

Keyboards

Fixed in Beta 3: There are display issues with QuickType suggestions in share sheets.
Note: Russian, Turkish, and Korean QuickType keyboards require iOS 9 beta 2 or later.
Known Issue: If you use a complex passcode on an iPad, some panes in Settings will now show the keyboard.

Keychain

Fixed in Beta 3: Under certain circumstances, when enabling iCloud keychain on an OS X El Capitan or iOS 9 system using the iCloud Security Code, you may see “incorrect security code” or “could not set up iCloud keychain” even if you’ve entered the correct security code and SMS verification code.
Known Issues: You may be unable to join an existing iCloud Keychain circle using iCloud Security Code and SMS Verification Code.
Workaround: Approve from another device.
After changing your iCloud password, you may see an “iCloud Keychain Reset” prompt.
Workaround: Re-enable iCloud Keychain.
If you have two-step verification enabled on your AppleID and then change your iCloud Keychain or iCloud Security Code on a non-trusted device, you see a “Verification Failed” error.
Workaround: Log out of iCloud, log back into the account, and enable iCloud Keychain.
If your iCloud account uses two-factor authentication, you will get a sign-in alert on all logged-in iOS 9 or OS X El Capitan devices whenever there is a change in the phone number in Settings > iCloud > Keychain > Advanced.

Localization

Fixed in Beta 3: For devices on which English is not the default language, some content may appear in English instead of the expected language.

Maps

Fixed in Beta 3: MapKit’s MKDirections do not get directions or ETA responses from MapKit in this beta.

Mail

Known Issue: A Yahoo mail account may periodically display “Cannot get mail.”

Messages

Known Issues: When recording audio messages, the audio glyphs are not shown. This occurs both in quick reply and in the Messages app. When you send an audio message, it may be difficult to begin playback.

MetalKit

Known Issue: MTKMesh and MTKMeshBuffer objects initialize incorrectly in this beta, which limits the use of MetalKit with Model I/O.

Music

Fixed in Beta 3: The Radio tab is not available in the Music app.
Note: When users plug in headphones or connect to Bluetooth or CarPlay in their car, their favorite music app appears on the lock screen or the car display.
For your app to be eligible for this, it must publish to Now Playing upon launch and consistently maintain a Now Playing state. A common practice upon launch is to continue playing the track from when the app was last exited.
Known Issues: The share sheet may not appear when sharing tracks from Apple Music.
It may not be possible to Love an album or playlist.
The New tab may not load if you are not signed into Apple Music.
The Apple Music signup screen may not display correctly.

Networking

Note: When negotiating a TLS/SSL connection with Diffie-Hellman key exchange, iOS 9 requires a 1024-bit group or larger. These connections include:
Secure Web (HTTPS)
Enterprise Wi-Fi (802.1X)
Secure e-mail (IMAP, POP, SMTP)
Printing servers (IPPS)

Phone

Known Issues : Call history may be lost upon upgrade to this beta.
Voicemail may be unavailable after an erase install.
Workaround: Reboot the device.

Photo Booth

Known Issue: Photos taken with Photo Booth are not saved.

Photos

Fixed in Beta 3: After restoring from iCloud backup, photos not stored in iCloud Photo Library fail to display thumbnails.

Podcasts

Fixed in Beta 3: If you change the media type of content in iTunes to “podcast episode,” and then sync those podcasts, the Podcast app will crash on launch.

Safari

Notes: “Find on Page” is now available both from the share sheet as well as in the Completions List.
Request Desktop Site has moved; it’s now in the Share sheet instead of Favorites.
Web Browser–to–Native App Handoff does not work with your app if the apple-app-site-association file isn’t correctly formatted and signed. For more information, see Handoff Programming Guide and Shared Web Credentials Reference.
Known Issue: If you use Autofill on iPad, passwords may not be automatically entered into login fields.
Workaround: Manually input the text. Your passwords can be found in Settings > Safari > Passwords.

Search

Fixed in Beta 3: Tapping a Mail message, Maps favorites, Note, or Message in search results does not open the app on some devices.
When submitting an activity to be searchable with NSUserActivity, the metadata (attributeSet) does not get added to the index. The title and keywords property are the only activity metadata added to the index.

Settings

Fixed in Beta 3: You may see a black screen when trying to add Google or Yahoo accounts.
CoreSpotlight items indexed with description don’t display the description in Search.
Known Issues: Third-party app settings sometimes do not appear in Simulator.

Setup Assistant

Fixed in Beta 3: iForgot links don’t work in Setup Assistant.

Siri

Known Issue: Siri Eyes Free may not work in this beta.

SpriteKit

Fixed in Beta 3: containsNode: and containedNodeSet do not work in this beta.

Spotlight

Known Issues: Tapping a Mail message, Maps favorites, Note, or Message in search results does not open the app on some devices.
After upgrading to this beta, some contacts are not searchable in Spotlight.

Telephony

Known Issue: After purchasing a cellular data plan on an iPad, it may display an alert that indicates the plan has expired.
Workaround: Wait a few minutes, then toggle airplane mode.

UIKit

Fixed in Beta 3: UIModalPresentationPopover style doesn’t update its barButtonItem anchor position when the window is resized.
Notes: In iOS 9, when layoutIfNeeded is sent to a view and all of the following conditions are satisfied (which is not common), we apply fitting-size constraints (width/height = 0 at UILayoutPriorityFittingSizeLevel) instead of required size constraints (width/height required to match current size):
The receiver is not yet in the subtree of a view that hosts a layout engine, such as window, view controller view (unless you have set translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints to NOfalse on that view—or created constraints that have one item in its subtree and one item outside it), table view cell content view, and so on.
The final ancestor (that is, top-level view) of the receiver has translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints set to NOfalse.
The top-level view has a subview that is not a UIViewController-owned layout guide that also has translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints set to NOfalse.
Under condition 1, we create a temporary layout engine from the top-level view and add all the constraints from the subtree to it. The problem is that we need to add some constraints that make the size of the top-level view unambiguous in the layout engine. The old behavior (prior to iOS 9) was that we would add constraints to restrict the size of the top-level view to its current bounds for any situation under condition 1. This really doesn’t make sense when you add conditions 2 & 3 and can result in unsatisfiable-constraints logging and broken layout.
So on iOS 9, for this special case only, we use fitting-size constraints instead.
This means that if you are sending layoutIfNeeded to a view under these conditions on iOS 9, you must be sure that either you have sufficient constraints to establish a size for the top-level view (which usually, though not always, is the receiver) or you must add temporary size constraints to the top-level view of layout size you desire before sending layoutIfNeeded, and remove them afterward.
For apps linked on iOS 9 or later, UITextView will now always correctly constrict its NSTextContainer to the fit inside the view when scrolling is disabled. Overflowing lines that lie outside of an NSTextContainer, even partially, are not rendered.
In previous iOS releases, the NSTextContainer sometimes was not constricted in size. This meant that logically overflowing lines were erroneously rendered. If you are seeing previously rendered lines at the end of your text view no longer rendered after linking your app against iOS 9, this behavior change is the likely cause. You can remedy this by making your UITextView larger, or perhaps by adjusting the bottom value of the text view’s textContainerInset property.
There is a redesigned UI for printing that includes a print preview (presented from UIPrintInteractionController or UIActivityViewController). For apps that provide printing items or use only built-in UIPrintFormatter objects (such as UISimpleTextPrintFormatter, UIMarkupTextPrintFormatter, UIWebViewPrintFormatter, or the UIViewPrintFormatter of any system-provided view), nothing additional is needed for the print preview to display.
Apps that subclass UIPrintPageRenderer or UIPrintFormatter to draw content for printing must be built with the iOS 9 SDK for the preview to display. The behavior of UIPrintPageRenderer has been updated to call drawPageAtIndex:inRect: multiple times with potentially different page sizes and margins. Various methods on UIPrintPageRenderer may be called from a non-main thread, but never from multiple threads concurrently.
UIPickerView and UIDatePicker are now resizable and adaptive—previously, these views would enforce a default size even if you attempted to resize them. These views also now default to a width of 320 points on all devices, instead of to the device width on iPhone.
Interfaces that rely on the old enforcement of the default size will likely look wrong when compiled for iOS 9. Any problems encountered can be resolved by fully constraining or sizing picker views to the desired size instead of relying on implicit behavior.

Watch App

Known Issues: Pairing iOS 9 beta 3 with watchOS 2 beta 1 or 2 requires you to sign out of your AppleID in Messages prior to pairing and to skip iCloud sign-in during pairing. Pairing with watchOS 2 beta 3 and WatchOS 1 is not impacted.
Tapping Cancel does not work in the iForgot work flows in Watch Setup Assistant.

Webkit

Note: The if-domain and unless-domain value strings only match the exact domain. To match the domain and any subdomains, begin the string with the asterisk character (*).

If you come across anything more, do let us know through the comments section.

Update #2: iOS 9 Beta 4 Seeded To Developers, Here’s What’s New

The fourth beta of iOS 9 has been seeded to registered iOS developers for testing. This beta comes about two weeks after the third beta and more than a month after the iOS 9 announcement at WWDC 2015.

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The iOS 9 beta 4 carries the build number 13A4305g and is currently available as an OTA update for those who are on the previous beta.

Registered iOS developers can also download the beta from the iOS developer portal.

iOS 9 is mostly an incremental update that brings improvements to performance, Siri and so on. There’s nothing much new in terms of design or new features.

Here are the latest changes found in the fourth iOS 9 beta so far:

Home Sharing for Music is back. This feature was removed in iOS 8.4, but it looks like iOS 9 will have it.
iOS 9 beta 3 didn’t allow the use of Volume buttons to take pictures, that’s been fixed in beta 4.
The Notifications icon in the Settings app is now colored red, it used to be grey before. Also the Battery icon is rounded and smoother.
Redesigned options in the Music app for sharing, adding to playlist and more.
The Handoff feature is now shown at the bottom of the App Switcher and easily accessible.
The first beta to support the newly released iPod Touch 6th gen.
A Picture-in-Picture feature in Apples’ Podcast app lets you view video podcasts while browsing.

There will also be several other small changes that you will find here and there.

iOS 9 comes out later this fall, probably alongside the release of the new iPhones. It is compatible with iPhone 4s or later, iPad 2 and later and iPod Touch 5th and 6th gen.

Update #3: iOS 9 Beta 5 Seeded To Developers, Here’s What’s New

The fifth beta of iOS 9 has been seeded to registered Apple developers and comes more than two weeks after the last beta.

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If you’re a registered iOS developer and are already running iOS 9 beta 4, then you can simply update to the latest beta using OTA feature in the Settings app.

You can also download the latest iOS 9 beta 5 from Apple’s iOS developer portal.

iOS 9 beta 4 brought back the Home Sharing feature in Music and also patched a bug that did not allow users to click pictures using the volume button. There were other small changes as well.

In iOS 9 beta 5, build number 13A4325c, Apple has included a lot of new features. Here’s a list of some of them that has been discovered so far: