Apple Seeds First Public Betas of iOS 15 and iPadOS 15

Apple today seeded the first betas of iOS and iPadOS 15 to public beta testers, allowing non-developers to download and test the new updates for the first time since WWDC.

Public beta testers who have signed up for Apple's beta testing program can download the iOS and iPadOS 15 updates over the air after installing the proper certificate from the Public Beta website.

iOS 15 adds new features for FaceTime, tools for reducing distractions, updated notifications, and privacy enhancements. ‌FaceTime‌ supports SharePlay for watching TV, listening to music, or screen sharing with friends, while a Shared with You feature keeps track of the songs, website links, pictures, and more that friends send you.

Focus is designed to help keep you on task by cutting out notifications you don't want while you're busy, and there's a new notifications summary feature that prevents you from being inundated with unimportant notifications throughout the day.

Safari has a redesigned look with a compact tab bar that's located at the bottom of the screen, plus Tab Groups let users save open tabs for later. Maps has a new zoomed out globe view and a new 3D view in select cities, plus there's more road detail and an AR-based walking direction feature.

The Wallet app will support IDs and more kinds of keys in iOS 15, and Photos gains updates to Memories and a new Live Text feature that uses on-device intelligence to recognize the text in an image, making it searchable and copyable. Spotlight is better than ever, and processing for Siri requests is now done directly on device.

Mail Privacy Protection in the Mail app stops senders from seeing your IP address and knowing if you've opened up an email, and an App Privacy Report gives you details on how often apps use permissions like camera and location access.

There are a ton of other new features available in iOS and iPadOS 15, with full details available in our roundup.