Apple this afternoon seeded the second beta of iOS 11 to developers, with the update coming as something of a surprise because betas normally come on Monday or Tuesday mornings.
iOS 11 beta 2 introduces a very long list of bug fixes to address issues that were discovered in the first beta of iOS 11, and registered developers should read over the extensive release notes to get an idea of what's been fixed.
The update also introduces many new bugs and highlights many known issues, such as an unexpected pop when restarting an iPhone 7/7 Plus or an SOS notification that goes out even when an alert is cancelled, so this is still not a stable beta and it should only be installed on secondary devices.
Along with fixing bugs and introducing new ones, there are some small feature tweaks and changes that are included in iOS 11, which we've outlined in the video below.
- Dock - Show Recents - There's a new option under General --> Multitasking that allows you to change the Dock settings on the iPad to disable the "Show Recents" option that displays your most recently used apps on the dock. With this disabled, only apps that you have added to the dock will show up.
- Do Not Disturb While Driving - There are now new Do Not Disturb While Driving options available in the Settings app and Do Not Disturb While Driving is enabled in this beta.
- Dictation - Support for Hindi Dictation has been added in beta 2 according to Apple's beta release notes.
- Control Center - There's a new option to disable Control Center within apps, preventing it from coming up when you swipe upwards. This option leaves Control center accessible from the Home screen. Bluetooth in Control Center works like the Wi-Fi option, disconnecting from whatever's connected rather than toggling it off.
- Safari - In the Settings app in the Safari section under Advanced, there's a new option to turn on experimental features like Constant Properties, CSS Spring Animations, WebGPU, Web Animations, and more.
- Files app - There's a new "Save to Files" Share Sheet option for saving photos, documents, and other files to the Files app. When using "Save to Files" a menu pops up that allows you to choose a location. Save to Files replaces Add to iCloud Drive.
Legacy document providers like OneDrive, Box, PDF Expert, and other apps are also now showing up as Locations in the Files app, but aren't using the new iOS 11 file extensions yet.
- Lock Screen - There's a new blur animation when pulling down from the top of the device to bring up the Lock Screen/Notification Center or when pulling up to access the Home screen again.
iOS 11 is currently only available to developers, but Apple has said it will make a version of the update available to public beta testers at the end of June, which is next week. We're expecting several more betas, and will likely see additional feature tweaks and changes ahead of the software's public release in the fall.
