More developer beta profiles for you, it seems.
Apple / Pocket-lint
It looks like Apple is working on changes to how iOS betas are handled to prevent people from installing iOS 17 development betas when they aren’t actually developers.
Normally, installing a developer beta of any iOS software from Apple is a simple matter of getting your hands on a developer profile and applying it to your iPhone. That’s about to change soon, it seems, with Apple already having steps in place to ditch Profiles in favor of something new.
MacRumors reports that the very first developer beta of iOS 16.4 changed the way things work by adding a new menu that lets people choose whether they want to download public or developer betas to their device. But the change ensures that the new menu will only appear on iPhones signed into Apple ID accounts registered with Apple.
“The menu will only appear if a user’s iPhone is signed in to the same Apple ID they used to sign up for Apple’s Developer Program,” the report notes. “In future versions of iOS, Apple says this menu will be the only way to enable developer betas, as profiles will stop working.”
Developer beta profiles have historically been trivially easy to download from the internet, although Apple has shown signs of trying to crack down on such websites in the past.
As Apple is expected to announce iOS 17 at WWDC in June and immediately begin releasing developer betas, it seems the only way to access it on day one will be to register as an Apple Developer. It currently costs $99 per year, of course.
For everyone else, the public beta program for IOS 17 is likely to start a month later, in July. The update will finally be available for everyone in September if we refer to previous release schedules. This is also when Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 15 lineup.