iOS 26 is official and there’s a lot to get excited for. With its unveiling today at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, a new developer beta will soon be available to install for, well, developers, but also anyone else willing to take the plunge into potential unstable territory.

iOS 26 brings a brand new Liquid Glass design language to your iPhone, offering up a slick user interface that will be consistent with the rest of Apple’s software and that was inspired by the VisionOS software for the Vision Pro headset. And that’s on top of all of the visual enhancements that we got in iOS 18, last year’s release. (Apple is bypassing 19, jumping directly from 18 to 26 in its numbering system.) 

While some enthusiasts will be unfazed by the warnings, we’ll go over what you can expect if you opt to install the new iOS 26 developer beta on your iPhone. 

For more, catch up on all of the new announcements at WWDC 2025.

There’s nothing stable about the ‘Developer beta’ builds

The polished iOS that Apple showed off on stage at its WWDC keynote today was not the same as what’s now available in the developer build being released today. The developer build will, undoubtedly, ship with bugs. That’s both expected and fine, for one reason. 

Developer betas are just that — builds for developers to test their apps for compatibility — and far from something an end user would be able to live with on a day-to-day basis. That’s also why Apple breaks its betas into developer builds and public beta builds — the latter of which will be more usable for everyday folk. 

Exactly what could be broken in the beta build is anyone’s guess. Last year, the iOS 18 Developer Preview had several issues, including certain apps refusing to open or force-closing, notifications not showing up, and other general issues that can significantly put a damper on the entire phone experience. Once we get our hands on the latest build, we’ll do the dirty work for you, so you don’t have to.If you plan on installing the developer beta anyway, you can check out our guide when the update drops.

Watch this: Introducing iOS 26 at WWDC25

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If you’re going to install the developer beta, make a backup first

If you decide to install the developer beta, there’s a chance that a bug or performance issue will significantly impair your ability to use your phone, and you might have to wait until the next beta release for fixes. If you run into a situation like this, you’ll probably just want to go back to iOS 18 until the public beta arrives — and if you don’t want to make that walk back an arduous mission, you should just do yourself a favor and make a backup of your iPhone before installing the developer beta. 

Be warned that the best route to back up your iPhone might be iCloud and not your computer. While it should technically work, some bugs in the iOS 18 beta prevented their iPhones from being recognized on their computers, so some who made a backup via this method were unable to go back to a more stable version. That’s what can happen with the developer betas: significant issues might have you starting from scratch.

With that out of the way, here’s how to make a backup on your iPhone via iCloud:

• Settings
• Tap your name
• Find and select your device from the list
• Select iCloud Backup
• Tap Back Up Now

When to expect the iOS 26 public beta

Now that you’ve been warned about what could happen with installing the developer beta, you might want to save yourself some stress by holding off for the public beta — if you can weather the FOMO. 

You can expect the iOS 26 public bBeta to go live sometime in July. 

For more, check out what’s new in iPadOS 26.