iOS 17.4 Beta 3: A Smooth Ride Ahead?

The latest beta version of iOS 17.4, beta 3, is here and it feels pretty smooth. After installing it for the first time, I noticed that it installed quicker than normal, and getting to the home page didn't have any issues with my widget showing up. However, some of these wallpapers still missed their mark when adding a new wallpaper.

There were five other resolved issues in beta 3, but only some of them are noteworthy. One issue was viewing live camera video from HomeKit not working when away from home, which has now been fully fixed. Another issue was that tapping on a podcast show from recently searched would return to the recently searched view instead of the podcast show product page. The fix for pairing devices using Quick Start also failed occasionally, but it's now been resolved.

Another interesting aspect is the performance of iOS 17.4 beta 3. According to Geekbench, the single-core score was 2946, while the multicore score was 7323. While these numbers are not drastically different from those in beta 2, they do show a slight improvement. The battery life, however, is still unknown, as it's too early to tell how iOS 17.4 beta 3 will affect power consumption.

It appears that beta 3 is more focused on fixing UI bugs and underlying issues present in previous betas, rather than introducing new features. This might be a performance-focused update, with potential enhancements to battery life or other aspects of the operating system coming later.

What's Next?

The next step would be iOS 17.4 beta 4, which is expected to be released sometime this week. Given Apple's weekly release schedule, it's likely that beta 4 will be available on the same day as beta 3, probably on the 20th of February. After that, we can expect the Release Candidate (RC) version, which should come out around February 27th.

Finally, the official release of iOS 17.4 is expected to follow shortly after the RC build, possibly on Monday, March 4th. This timing would align with Apple's typical pattern of releasing final versions on Mondays in early March.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys my name is Brandon and today Apple released iOS 17.4 beta 3 for registered developers and soon for public beta testers now along with this update we also got beta 3 for iPad OS 17.4 watch OS 10.4 Mac OS Sonoma 14.4 and tvos 17.4 and we did also get Vision OS 1.1 beta 2 for the Apple Vision Pro but of course in this video we're talking primarily about iOS and iPad OS 17.4 beta 3 so you can see the size of this update came in at 681 mbes on my 15 Pro Max And as far as the build number goes if we head to our settings General about the new build number is 21e 520 D so we do have a d at the end of the build number which indicates we are approaching a final release but we likely still have at least one beta to go so if we go down the modem firmware has also been updated to now 1.5 5.04 for the iPhone 15 series all right so now what's new here in iOS 17.4 beta 3 and the first couple of things are inside of the podcast application and specifically when you look at the transcriptions so I have beta 2 on the left beta 3 on the right now if we go into the transcriptions you'll notice something after we click on the transcriptions button and you will see on beta 2 it disappears after a few seconds and then just shows search down there at the bottom but that does not happen on beta 3 it only appears that search down there only appears when you start scrolling down the transcription and you'll see that it goes back to the now playing view where it shows the buttons whereas before it did not show the now playing buttons or the play Paw and all those you know playback buttons it just showed the you know search button down here and that was it it only appeared if you went up so that is a slight change here now also if we tap on the three dots up in the top right you will see that if we go to view TR transcript right here the breadcrumbs are different up in the top left depending on where you're coming from so right here they both say home up in the top left however if I were to access this from my library and then I go to view transcript you can see that up in the top leftand corner it now shows Library instead of just saying back so the breadcrumbs appeared to have been updated and are now more specific with beta 3 and this update also brought this splash screen to the podcast application so the first time you open a podcast you will see this splash screen and it just talks about transcripts and also search in transcripts just basically telling us about what we already know there's also been another change to the Safari address bar so this was changed in beta 2 but it's changed once again in beta 3 so you can see that the address bar looks to be a little bit smaller like it seems to be taller but also not as wide as it was in beta 2 and that's also evident by seeing the previous tab that you have open before on beta 2 you can see you can only see a little sliver of that tab that's open but now you can see a lot more and if we swipe over to go to that other tab you can see on both sides you can see much more of that open tab on beta 3 compared to Beta 2 and as far as the notification center bug it is still smooth in beta 3 so we no longer have that really clunky animation that we had before it is now much smoother than it was on 17.4 beta 1 or any previous version of iOS 17 which is a great sign now we do also still have the new toggle in privacy and security and then down here near the bottom we have pass Keys access for web browsers so that remains here in beta 3 so that just showed up in beta 2 for the first time but when you go into there you will not notice anything new unless you've actually added a pass key via a web browser because it says applications that have requested the ability to see which websites and apps you have saved pass keys for that's what will show up right here now there is also what appears to be a strange bug in iOS 17.4 beta 3 it's either a change or a bug but I think it's more of a bug so if you go to add a new wallpaper and this is for the 15 Pros only so if you go down to collections and go to the iPhone 15 Pro default wallpaper you will notice that they are much darker here in beta 3 and it may just be you know the always on display version of this wallpaper showing up instead of the normal version of the wallpaper which is much more vibrant and bright oh and by the way the identifiable region little section that showed up here in the bottom of settings General about that is no longer here in beta 3 because it was removed in beta 2 and it's still not here in beta 3 so my guess is that that was either a not ever supposed to be seen by the public or B that's not going to be added until the final release of 17.4 but that definitely has something to do with the you know side loing feature that is coming with 17.4 so there's also a possibility that that only shows on EU devices and it was kind of never meant to show on us space devices and then as far as the release notes go we actually have a lot of resolved issues with beta 3 so beta 2 had quite a few issues that did have workarounds but beta 3 fully resolved a lot of those issues eight resolved issues to be exact from beta 2 to Beta 3 so some of those include viewing homick camera live video might not work when away from home so that has now been fully fixed with beta 3 tapping on a podcast show from recently searched occasionally returns du to the recently searched view instead of the podcast show product page and then also a fix for pairing might fail when using quick start to set up a new device now of course there were five other resolved issues but those are just some of the noteworthy ones with beta 3 now as far as the performance goes iOS 17.4 beta 3 feels pretty smooth I mean it actually feels a little bit better than what it felt like after installing beta 2 for the first time it's hard to say if that's Placebo or not but it installed quicker than normal and also just getting to the home page I did not have any issues with my widget showing up like I do sometimes I still had the issue with the wallpapers not showing up you know right away when you go into the plus to add a new wallpaper some of these are still missing but I wouldn't really consider that oh there they go they appear now but I wouldn't really consider that you know a performance issue so I think performance so far is great here on beta 3 and you can see what the geek bench score was for this beta 3 so 2946 on the single core and a 7323 for the multicore so not bad at all and you can see it's very similar to what we saw with beta 2 so barely any difference in the single core and also hardly any difference in the multicore but it is higher on the multicore and slightly lower on the single core compared to the previous beta now in terms of battery life of course it's way too early to tell how battery life is going to be on beta 3 but I would not really expect a big difference from beta 2 however performance did seem a little bit better to me on beta 3 compared to Beta 2 so we could see you know a jump there in battery life as well but you know beta 3 it seems like was a big focus on some of those UI bugs and also some of the other you know underlying issues that we had with beta 2 in terms of performance so this may have been just a performance focused update and beta 3 or beta 4 might enhance battery life or maybe even the RC but it's too early to tell I will let you guys know more details in my Apple weekly episode on Saturday after I've actually used the software for a few days all right so now let's talk about what to expect next from Apple so next up is going to be iOS 17.4 beta 4 and I would expect to see that next week so we are on a onewe release schedule so a weekly release schedule so I would expect to see iOS 17.4 beta 4 next week most likely on the 20th now I would expect that to be the final beta before the RC or release candidate build so I would expect to see the RC version come the following week on the week of February 26th it'll most likely be right there on February 27th and then after that RC of course we usually always get the final version the next week early in the week and this time I'm guessing that we're going to see that on Monday March 4th since Apple does typically release those final releases on Mondays so expect to see the final release in the first full week of March so that is IOS 17.4 beta 3 not a ton of changes really just some refinements and a lot of bug fixes AKA resolved issues which is always good to see in these beta versions but nothing major new in terms of features which shouldn't really be expected on a04 beta 3 but nonetheless I hope you guys did enjoy this video if you did I would appreciate if you give it a thumbs up also make sure to subscribe so you don't miss future iOS 17 videos including the final version of 17.4 here in a couple of weeks but anyways guys thanks for watching and I'll see you soonwhat's up guys my name is Brandon and today Apple released iOS 17.4 beta 3 for registered developers and soon for public beta testers now along with this update we also got beta 3 for iPad OS 17.4 watch OS 10.4 Mac OS Sonoma 14.4 and tvos 17.4 and we did also get Vision OS 1.1 beta 2 for the Apple Vision Pro but of course in this video we're talking primarily about iOS and iPad OS 17.4 beta 3 so you can see the size of this update came in at 681 mbes on my 15 Pro Max And as far as the build number goes if we head to our settings General about the new build number is 21e 520 D so we do have a d at the end of the build number which indicates we are approaching a final release but we likely still have at least one beta to go so if we go down the modem firmware has also been updated to now 1.5 5.04 for the iPhone 15 series all right so now what's new here in iOS 17.4 beta 3 and the first couple of things are inside of the podcast application and specifically when you look at the transcriptions so I have beta 2 on the left beta 3 on the right now if we go into the transcriptions you'll notice something after we click on the transcriptions button and you will see on beta 2 it disappears after a few seconds and then just shows search down there at the bottom but that does not happen on beta 3 it only appears that search down there only appears when you start scrolling down the transcription and you'll see that it goes back to the now playing view where it shows the buttons whereas before it did not show the now playing buttons or the play Paw and all those you know playback buttons it just showed the you know search button down here and that was it it only appeared if you went up so that is a slight change here now also if we tap on the three dots up in the top right you will see that if we go to view TR transcript right here the breadcrumbs are different up in the top left depending on where you're coming from so right here they both say home up in the top left however if I were to access this from my library and then I go to view transcript you can see that up in the top leftand corner it now shows Library instead of just saying back so the breadcrumbs appeared to have been updated and are now more specific with beta 3 and this update also brought this splash screen to the podcast application so the first time you open a podcast you will see this splash screen and it just talks about transcripts and also search in transcripts just basically telling us about what we already know there's also been another change to the Safari address bar so this was changed in beta 2 but it's changed once again in beta 3 so you can see that the address bar looks to be a little bit smaller like it seems to be taller but also not as wide as it was in beta 2 and that's also evident by seeing the previous tab that you have open before on beta 2 you can see you can only see a little sliver of that tab that's open but now you can see a lot more and if we swipe over to go to that other tab you can see on both sides you can see much more of that open tab on beta 3 compared to Beta 2 and as far as the notification center bug it is still smooth in beta 3 so we no longer have that really clunky animation that we had before it is now much smoother than it was on 17.4 beta 1 or any previous version of iOS 17 which is a great sign now we do also still have the new toggle in privacy and security and then down here near the bottom we have pass Keys access for web browsers so that remains here in beta 3 so that just showed up in beta 2 for the first time but when you go into there you will not notice anything new unless you've actually added a pass key via a web browser because it says applications that have requested the ability to see which websites and apps you have saved pass keys for that's what will show up right here now there is also what appears to be a strange bug in iOS 17.4 beta 3 it's either a change or a bug but I think it's more of a bug so if you go to add a new wallpaper and this is for the 15 Pros only so if you go down to collections and go to the iPhone 15 Pro default wallpaper you will notice that they are much darker here in beta 3 and it may just be you know the always on display version of this wallpaper showing up instead of the normal version of the wallpaper which is much more vibrant and bright oh and by the way the identifiable region little section that showed up here in the bottom of settings General about that is no longer here in beta 3 because it was removed in beta 2 and it's still not here in beta 3 so my guess is that that was either a not ever supposed to be seen by the public or B that's not going to be added until the final release of 17.4 but that definitely has something to do with the you know side loing feature that is coming with 17.4 so there's also a possibility that that only shows on EU devices and it was kind of never meant to show on us space devices and then as far as the release notes go we actually have a lot of resolved issues with beta 3 so beta 2 had quite a few issues that did have workarounds but beta 3 fully resolved a lot of those issues eight resolved issues to be exact from beta 2 to Beta 3 so some of those include viewing homick camera live video might not work when away from home so that has now been fully fixed with beta 3 tapping on a podcast show from recently searched occasionally returns du to the recently searched view instead of the podcast show product page and then also a fix for pairing might fail when using quick start to set up a new device now of course there were five other resolved issues but those are just some of the noteworthy ones with beta 3 now as far as the performance goes iOS 17.4 beta 3 feels pretty smooth I mean it actually feels a little bit better than what it felt like after installing beta 2 for the first time it's hard to say if that's Placebo or not but it installed quicker than normal and also just getting to the home page I did not have any issues with my widget showing up like I do sometimes I still had the issue with the wallpapers not showing up you know right away when you go into the plus to add a new wallpaper some of these are still missing but I wouldn't really consider that oh there they go they appear now but I wouldn't really consider that you know a performance issue so I think performance so far is great here on beta 3 and you can see what the geek bench score was for this beta 3 so 2946 on the single core and a 7323 for the multicore so not bad at all and you can see it's very similar to what we saw with beta 2 so barely any difference in the single core and also hardly any difference in the multicore but it is higher on the multicore and slightly lower on the single core compared to the previous beta now in terms of battery life of course it's way too early to tell how battery life is going to be on beta 3 but I would not really expect a big difference from beta 2 however performance did seem a little bit better to me on beta 3 compared to Beta 2 so we could see you know a jump there in battery life as well but you know beta 3 it seems like was a big focus on some of those UI bugs and also some of the other you know underlying issues that we had with beta 2 in terms of performance so this may have been just a performance focused update and beta 3 or beta 4 might enhance battery life or maybe even the RC but it's too early to tell I will let you guys know more details in my Apple weekly episode on Saturday after I've actually used the software for a few days all right so now let's talk about what to expect next from Apple so next up is going to be iOS 17.4 beta 4 and I would expect to see that next week so we are on a onewe release schedule so a weekly release schedule so I would expect to see iOS 17.4 beta 4 next week most likely on the 20th now I would expect that to be the final beta before the RC or release candidate build so I would expect to see the RC version come the following week on the week of February 26th it'll most likely be right there on February 27th and then after that RC of course we usually always get the final version the next week early in the week and this time I'm guessing that we're going to see that on Monday March 4th since Apple does typically release those final releases on Mondays so expect to see the final release in the first full week of March so that is IOS 17.4 beta 3 not a ton of changes really just some refinements and a lot of bug fixes AKA resolved issues which is always good to see in these beta versions but nothing major new in terms of features which shouldn't really be expected on a04 beta 3 but nonetheless I hope you guys did enjoy this video if you did I would appreciate if you give it a thumbs up also make sure to subscribe so you don't miss future iOS 17 videos including the final version of 17.4 here in a couple of weeks but anyways guys thanks for watching and I'll see you soon\n"