Apple today seeded the fourth betas of upcoming iOS 13.5 and iPadOS 13.5 updates to developers and public beta testers, one week after seeding the third betas.
Beta builds are available to developers over the air on the devices with the proper configuration installed. Developers can also download the new betas from the Apple Developer Center.
Public beta builds of the new operating systems can be downloaded via the Apple Beta Software Program website by users signed up to take part in the testing program. If you’re interested in trying out the betas of the upcoming operating systems you can sign up for the program by clicking the same link.
The new beta of iOS 13.5 makes it easier to unlock an iPhone with a passcode when wearing a mask, making it more convenient for the many people that are wearing face coverings during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The passcode interface now pops up more quickly when an iPhone detects that a mask is obscuring the face, so it’s quicker to get into an iPhone using a passcode than ever before.
A tweak has also been made to Group FaceTime, adding a new toggle to disable the feature that automatically enlarges the tile of the person who is speaking. By default, Group FaceTime has a dynamic view with a tile for each person, and the person speaking has a larger tile than the other participants.
An “Automatic Prominence” section in the FaceTime portion of the Settings app allows this to be disabled so that all of the people using FaceTime are displayed in a grid with equal-sized windows no matter who is talking. A tile can be enlarged with a tap.
The previous beta introduced an API change to include initial support for its exposure notification platform in both the new iOS beta and Xcode 11.5, updating it to iOS 13.5 because it’s using a different SDK than iOS 13.4.
The beta version of the exposure notification API to allow public health authorities to begin developing COVID–19 contact tracing apps that use the API’s functionality also debuted in the last beta.
A toggle is included to allow users to opt-out of participating in COVID-19 exposure notifications.
The update also includes the same content that was included in the second beta of iOS 13.4.5.
It may address an issue with Personal Hotspot that prevents it from working for some users and it could also fix a VPN-related vulnerability.
While listening to a song in Apple Music, a user can tap the Share button and then select Instagram to generate a Story with the song title and album name, plus a matching animated background.
Once a song is shared on Instagram, other people should then be able to tap on the song name and listen to it in the Apple Music app.
iOS 13.5 also patches two security vulnerabilities affecting the Mail app on the iPhone and the iPad.
The above new features may or may not make it into the final version of iOS 13.5, only time and testing will tell.
As usual, MacTrast and Apple both warn users to not install any betas on your daily driver iPhone or iPad, instead only install betas on a device set aside for testing purposes.