Apple pushed out the iOS / iPadOS 16.5 Developer Preview Beta 3 update (internal version number: 20F5050f) to iPhone and iPad users, 14 days after the last release.
The iOS 16.5 Beta 3 update reads as follows:
Apple’s official changelog, as well as reports from 9to5Mac, MacRumors and other media outlets, and did not find any new features introduced in the iOS / iPadOS 16.5 Beta 3 update.
Apple’s development team has now focused on iOS 17 and the iOS 16 development branch is coming to an end, so no new major features or additions will be introduced.
The iOS/iPadOS 16.5 Beta 3 changelog is the same as Beta 2, so we won’t go over it here.
The updates to iOS 16.5 Beta 2 are as follows:
Complete disabling of Beta description files:
Apple discontinued the Beta profile on iPhone and iPad in the iOS / iPadOS 16.4 update. In iOS / iPadOS 16.5 Beta 2 and watchOS 9.5 Beta 2, this Beta tweak now applies to Apple Watch as well.
This means that watchOS Beta updates are no longer enabled via the watchOS Beta description file, but via the Watch app on the iPhone.
In addition, macOS has also switched to a new beta testing method: [Apple iOS / iPadOS 16.5 Developer Preview Beta 3
Fixes
New improvements:
- Shared administrators in the home can now also pair and add Matter accessories
Fixed:
- Fixed: When attempting a manual software update for a Matter accessory with an available update, Home may not indicate that an update has been requested and continue to indicate that an update is available.
- Fixed: Shared administrator accessory pairing failed if Home hub was running a version prior to tvOS 16.5 beta.
- Fixed: An issue where the Matter accessory would provide an update again even though the update had been completed.
- Fixed: Shared administrators were unable to pair the first Matter accessory in the family.
Here are the updates to iOS 16.5 Beta 1:
- Support for recording screens via Siri
- iOS 16.5 Beta 1 allows users to start and end screen recording sessions with Siri voice commands. Previously, users had to manually tap the Control Center button to start and end a session.
- Apple News introduces the Sports tab.
- In iOS 16.5 Beta 1, the Apple News app has integrated the Following and Search tabs and introduced a new Sports tab. This tab displays news and scores for the team’s users follow.
Optimising Home
Shared Admin in the Home app can pair/add accessories that support the Matter protocol
Other Features
iOS 16.5 Beta 1 also has a number of new features/functionality that Apple has announced but not yet released, mainly including
- Apple Card Savings account (similar to ‘balance transfer’)
- Next Generation CarPlay
- iMessage Contact Key Verification
- Customised Accessibility Mode
