Only a couple weeks after first announcing iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 at WWDC, Apple is ready to open up beta testing to the general public. That means if you have an iPhone or iPad, you can install an early version of the software that runs on your phone or tablet and provide feedback to help improve the overall experience before the full release this fall. There’s a lot to love about the update.
You don’t need the latest and greatest hardware to start getting a feel for this new software. iPhones as old as 2015’s iPhone 6s and 6s Plus can install iOS 14, while any iPad newer than the nearly 6-year-old iPad Air 2 can run iPadOS 14.
If you’re ready to take the plunge, you can sign up for Apple’s Beta Software Program right here. Once that’s done, all you have to do is enroll your devices, install the beta profile, and run the software update when it eventually appears. Just because installing the beta is remarkably easy doesn’t mean you should enter into this lightly. We’ve been using developer versions of the iOS and iPadOS updates more-or-less since they were released, and while they seem more stable than beta builds we’ve tried in years past, there’s always a risk something important could go awry.
If a few weeks into testing you decide that the beta is just too buggy or it breaks an app you need, you can go back to iOS 13. You’ll need to factory-reset your device to do it.
Any iCloud backups created while you were enrolled in the iOS 14 beta cannot be used on a device running iOS 13, so I suggest creating an encrypted backup using Finder on a Mac or iTunes on a PC. Without a backup, you’ll have to start fresh.
