Chrome Central: Third Public Beta of iOS 12.2 Coming Today

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Apple today plans to release the third beta of an upcoming iOS 12.2 update to its public beta testing group, one day after seeding the third beta to developers and two weeks after releasing the second public beta.

Beta testers who have joined Apple's beta testing program will receive the iOS 12.2 beta update over-the-air after installing the proper certificate on an iOS device. The update will become available right around 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time or 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

Those who want to download the new beta can do so after signing up for the beta program, which gives access to iOS, macOS, and tvOS betas.

The iOS 12.2 update expands Apple News to Canada for the first time, with Canadian iPhone and iPad users able to access news stories in English, French, or both. It introduces infrastructure for AirPlay 2 and HomeKit on third-party TVs, a feature announced in early January.

The TV remote feature in Control Center has been redesigned to take up the full display of an iPhone (with further tweaks introduced in the third beta), and there are tweaks to the Wallet app with a refined interface and a new look for Apple Pay Cash. Changes have been made to Safari with warnings about unsecured websites and new search arrows, and there's now a setting to set Downtime for apps on a day by day basis.

Apple is improving Safari's privacy in iOS 12.2 through a new Motion & Orientation toggle located under Settings --> Safari --> Privacy & Security, which is disabled by default. The setting needs to be enabled on to allow websites to display content that relies on motion data from the accelerometer and gyroscope in the iPhone and iPad.

There are new Animoji in the second iOS 12.2 beta, including a boar, a shark, a giraffe, and an owl. Animoji can be used within the Messages and FaceTime apps. For some AT&T users, there's a new "5G E" icon for the cellular signal, replacing the standard LTE icon. This is a bit misleading of AT&T, because the iPhone does not support 5G, nor is the network AT&T calls 5G E actual 5G. Instead, it's an upgraded version of LTE, with more info available here.

The third beta revamps the Remote in Control Center with a darker interface, changes the logo of Apple News, tweaks the About screen, and includes a new feature that will offer Today at Apple session suggestions via Siri. It also fixes the Group FaceTime bug and reenables Group FaceTime for beta users, and it fixes that pesky Lock screen bug that replaced battery charge with the date.

For a full list of everything new in the third beta, make sure to check out our iOS 12.2 beta 3 tidbits post. A complete list of all of the new features found in iOS 12.2 so far can be found in our full iOS 12.2 overview.

The iOS 12.2 update will likely see several rounds of beta testing over the course of the next month or so before it launches to the public.

Related Roundup: iOS 12

This article, "Third Public Beta of iOS 12.2 Coming Today" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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