Apple Releases First Public Beta of iOS 16.1 With Clean Energy Charging, Live Activities and More

Thursday September 15, 2022 1:07 pm PDT by Juli Clover

Apple today seeded the first beta of an upcoming iOS 16.1 update to public beta testers, opening up the beta testing process to the general public. Today's beta comes one day after Apple provided the beta to developers.

iOS 16
Public beta testers who have signed up for Apple's free beta testing program can download the ‌iOS 16.1‌ beta over the air after installing the proper certificate from the Public Beta website.

Apple says that iOS 16.1 will introduce Live Activities, an interactive notification feature designed to let you keep an eye on things happening in real time. Live Activities will be available on the Lock Screen and Dynamic Island, but you won't see them in the beta because developers are still working on implementing support.

The update includes a Clean Energy Charging feature in the United States that causes the iPhone to selectively charge at times when lower carbon emission electricity is available, plus it lays the groundwork for Matter, a smart home standard that Apple plans to begin supporting this fall.

Other new features include a deletable Wallet app, changes to the Lock Screen customizing interface, and more, with details available in our iOS 16.1 feature guide. Apple has also seeded a new public beta of iPadOS 16.1.

Related Roundups: iOS 16, iPadOS 16

Related Forum: iOS 16

Top Rated Comments

thadoggfather

14 months ago

Clean energy charging lol. It’s a phone not a mega yacht.

Imagine ‘caring’ about your carbon footprint for an iPhone while upgrading every single year and ignoring the carbon footprint in that device being produced and sent to you

Classic - bring on the downvotes!

Score: 48 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Tommyinnit

If they really cared about the environment, they wouldn’t release phones every single year…

Score: 31 Votes (Like | Disagree)

souko

That millions of iPhones with active clean energy charging will make difference.

And you can sell your old iPhone to offset carbon emisdions of upgrading every year. So this feature does make sense.

Score: 11 Votes (Like | Disagree)

StudioMacs

Multiply electrical consumption by millions of devices, and it adds up.

It's not just about your one device. Apple has over 1.8 billion active iOS devices, and this will have an even greater impact on world-wide energy grids as existing devices are updated and upgraded.

Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)

ItsGavinC

I’m shocked they did this before the new iPhones tomorrow. There will be thousands who aren’t used to betas who will update then be confused or upset tomorrow when they have to set up their phone as new and then install the public beta profile in order to transfer their data from their old phone. They should have waited until Monday to release this as a public beta. Those of us on developer beta who are using it on our daily driver know not to upgrade this week.

That’s not how it works anymore. The phone knows to update BEFORE letting a user restore from backup. It’s slick and easy.

Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)

RalfTheDog

And who, I may ask, are you or frequent flyer Timothy Cook to determine for anyone else what this mystical, ineffable “right direction” is?

If it reduces energy use it is the right direction. If it uses non CO2 generating energy it is the right direction. Anything that generates more CO2 is worse than anything that generates less.

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