Should you install the Apple developer betas?

The Apple developer betas are exciting pre-pre-releases accompanying the spring-to-summer WWDC event (Apple’s World-wide developer conference). For as many years as I can remember (5? 10?) the full OS lineup has had the upcoming releases previewed, each with their own demo reel and headline-level changes. The trouble with the excitement is that the hype makes people forget that the original target audience of WWDC is developers that build on/for the Apple ecosystem and the previews released at this point aren’t the public betas.

Public betas are released by Apple later in the summer and still keep you ahead of the (super uncool) general population. For anything that needs a plausible level of stability, the public betas are really where you want to be considering experimenting. Anything sooner is asking for trouble. You might be ok. Or you might have to completely reimage your system.

In case you enjoy flowcharts, I tried to break down whether you should be installing macOS developer betas - especially the first couple releases:

flowchart TD
        A(["You're on the current OS"])
        A --> B{"Are you a developer?"}
        B --> C["No"]
        B --> D["Yes, I build things"]
        B --> E["Yes, I build things for that platform"]
        C --> F(["Stay on the current OS"])
        D --> F
        E --> G(["Test your app on the developer beta"])
        F --> H["I really don't want to"]
        H --> I(["At least take a backup first"])

If you got into trouble

If you tried out the developer beta for macOS and it has not gone well, there’s a few helpful links:

• Here’s how to reinstall macOS - https://support.apple.com/en-us/102655

• Hopefully you took a backup - https://support.apple.com/en-us/102307

• And are ready to reimage from macOS recovery - https://support.apple.com/en-us/102518

Similar processes are available for iPadOS and iOS, although they can be more tricky in the age of MFA tokens.

Snark and cynicism aside

Beta software is fun, and that excitement is why half of us got into building things with computers in the first place. I don’t use my iPad all the time, so I’m going to grab the developer beta there, but I have to remember that I’ve ended up reverting about every other year until the public beta.

This weekend I’m going to backup my personal laptop and give the macOS 26 developer beta a spin because I can’t wait to give the containerization package a try.