iOS 16 Public Beta 5 Available Now for Testers

New public beta builds for iOS 16 for iPhone, and iPadOS 16 for iPad, are available now to all users participating in the public beta testing programs for iOS and iPadOS.

The new public beta builds match the freshly released dev betas, but arrive a day later.

If you are currently enrolled in the public beta testing programs on your iPhone or iPad, you can download the latest iOS or iPadOS public beta builds from the Settings app > General > Software Update mechanism.

The latest iOS 16 public beta is fairly small, weighing in around 300mb for some devices.

Given that Apple has now scheduled an event for September 7, where the iPhone 14 is widely expected to debut along with the launch of iOS 16, it’s plausible that this particular build is close to the final version that will be released to all users.

iOS 16 for iPhone includes customizable lock screen experience that allows for widgets to be shown on the lock screen, new edit message features in iMessages, a feature to unsend and schedule emails in Mail app, refined Focus mode features that also can link to custom lock screens, new iCloud Photo Lirbary capabilities, and various other smaller features.

iPadOS 16 for iPad includes a new multitasking interface called Stage Manager (but only for M1 equipped iPad models), along with the smaller features included in iOS 16, except iPadOS 16 does not include the ability to add widgets to the iPad lock screen.

Beta system software is notoriously buggy and less stable than final versions, but if you’re an advanced user who likes to tinker with upcoming system software, you can install iOS 16 public beta on iPhone or install iPadOS 16 public beta on iPad rather easily. You will need to make sure your iPhone is compatible with iOS 16 or that the iPad is compatible with iPadOS 16.

Apple has said that iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 will be released this fall, though they recently announced that iPadOS 16 has been delayed slightly.