iOS 16 will be ready to download soon. Here’s what you need to know about the iOS 16 release date, the new features and compatibility.
Apple announced its big yearly operating system updates in its WWDC keynote on June 6. No platform is bigger or more important to Apple and its users than the iPhone, and thus no OS update is more important than iOS. After a successful reception to iOS 15 in 2021, iOS 16 was expected to add plenty of new features, and didn’t disappoint.
In this article, we spill the beans on everything you need to know about iOS 16 and how it’s going to affect your iPhone experience. We reveal new features, design changes, and the release schedule of iOS 16, and explain how to get your hands on an early beta version of the new software.
Updated 09/07/22: Apple has announced that iOS 16 will be released on Monday, September 12.
Apple has announced that iOS 16 will be released on Monday, September 12.
Though the company doesn’t divulge exact times for these releases, they typically show up at around 10am Pacific Time (1pm Eastern, 6pm UK time).
The first beta of iOS 16 (for developers only) was released immediately after the announcement at WWDC in June, but public beta testers had to wait until July 11. Over the coming weeks we’ll get a series of Developer and Public betas that bring us closer and closer to the final public release of iOS 16.
Generally speaking, each of the Public betas in the following list is closely based on the Developer beta that immediately precedes it.
There’s no saying how many beta versions will be released between June and September, but we expect there to be lots of them. When it was developing iOS 15, Apple released eight versions of the developer beta prior to general release. We tell you how to get the Developer and Public betas here.
Which Apple devices can install iOS 16? Any from the past five years: anyone with an iPhone 8 or later will be able to run iOS 16.
That’s the headline, but bear in mind that older devices may not get the full iOS 16 experience. Apple warns, for example, that the new Live Captions accessibility feature is available on iPhone 11 and later, while Door Detection and People Detection require the LiDAR scanner on the iPhone 12 Pro and later.
This is a big change from last year. At WWDC 2021, Apple announced that iOS 15 would run on very old models, such as the iPhone 6s (2015) and first-generation SE (2016). They’ve both dropped off the supported list, and the iPhone 7 is gone too. If you’ve got one of these iPhones, it may be time to upgrade.
iOS 16 is a substantial upgrade. It doesn’t change everything about your iPhone, but it’s filled with fun new features that will make it feel fresh this fall:
This can now be heavily customized (changing colors and fonts, for example) and upgraded with widgets for keeping an eye on the weather, your Activity rings, or whatever other information you need easy access to. And, rather like the faces on the Apple Watch, you can create multiple Lock Screens, each with its own wallpaper and widgets, and easily switch between them. See: All the ways you can customize your Lock Screen in iOS 16. We also look at How to keep your Lock Screen clean without missing a notification.
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This might seem trivial, but a lot of iPhone users were deeply annoyed when the handy battery percentage indicator disappeared from the top of their devices’ screen in 2017. (The notch on the iPhone X was the culprit, of course.) Those users will be pleased to hear that it’s coming back in iOS 16, albeit on certain devices only.
