Apple Updates iOS 9 Public Beta, Welcomes Back Home Sharing

Apple Updates iOS 9 Public Beta, Welcomes Back Home Sharing

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For those daring users who have been running Apple’s iOS 9 Public Beta on their iOS devices, a little bit of relief is arriving in the form of an update to iOS 9 Public Beta 2. Launched a few days ago, the beta update appears to be slowly rolling out to users—at least, it took us until this morning to gain access to the update.

The update isn’t as dramatic as the switch between iOS 8 and the first iteration of the iOS 9 Public Beta—it is just an update, after all. However, the new iteration of the beta brings with it a bunch of bug fixes, which should provide a bit of relief for those who feel as if their phones just haven’t been working all that well in the iOS 9 Public Beta (us included).

For those who were worried about the loss of Home Sharing in iOS 8.4, the second version of the iOS 9 Public Beta brings this feature back. Also, this version of Apple’s beta supports the brand-new iPod Touch devices that came out earlier this month—in case you have one and want to live on the mobile operating system wild side a little bit.

The new picture-in-picture option scheduled to debut with iOS 9 now works with Apple’s Podcasts app. And, if you’re a photo junkie, Apple has fixed the beta-testing bug that previously prevented you from using your device’s volume buttons to snap pictures.

Though this is only the second beta version released to the public, it’s actually the fourth tossed out to developers. Similarly, anyone also running the OS X public beta should have either received a new version to download or will be receiving one very soon, and it’ll match the contents of the fourth version of the OS X El Capitan beta that developers get.

The iOS beta update can be downloaded via iTunes—for those who already have the first public beta installed on their devices—or as an over-the-air update. You’ll receive a notification when the update has downloaded, and you can then install it at that time or delay it until later. If the latter, just head over to your iOS device’s Settings menu, tap General, then tap Software Update to start the process.

The full version of iOS 9 is expected to debut this fall. It’s unclear just how many more versions of the public beta Apple might release before then, but if you want to get in on the preview fun, just sign up here.