How To Apply an iOS Update Over-The-Air (OTA)

How To Apply an iOS Update Over-The-Air (OTA)

This Mac tip is provided by Mark Greentree and was originally posted on Mark’s blog – Everyday Mac Support. For more of Mark’s tips visit his site, follow him on Twitter, or browse his archive of posts here.

How To Apply an iOS Update Over-The-Air

One of the features introduced in iOS 5 is the ability to perform updates to your device without the need to be connected to a computer – a feature which Apple has made use of in each iOS version since.

You simply need to make sure your device has at least 50% battery life available or you will be asked to connect to a power source. You should probably do that anyway just to ensure all your bases are covered.

To perform the update which was just released simply proceed to Settings > General > Software Update. Your device will then check for the latest update and present the following window if an update is available:

  
As you can see details of the update are presented in the window above. As the file size exceeds Apple’s imposed 20MB limit on downloading over 3G from their servers you will need to be connected to a Wi-Fi network in order to download this specific update.

Tapping on Learn More will present you with more details about the update.

When ready simply tap Download and Install. You will be presented with the standard terms and conditions to agree to then you will see the download screen as shown below:

Looking towards the top of the window you will notice you have a blue bar indicating where the download is currently up to along with an approximate time remaining.

As I mentioned earlier you need to have at least 50% battery life in order to perform the install after it has been downloaded. Connecting it into an electrical port works perfectly. You will need to come back to this window and select Install Now but after about 15 minutes you device should be updated without further delay or problems.

You can still update via iTunes on you computer if you wish. Doing so will also perform a backup to your computer prior to an update being installed.

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