watchOS 5 developer beta 4 for Apple Watch is now available for testing. As always, we’ll dig through the latest beta version and highlight all the changes between the previous beta and the latest beta below. New in watchOS 5 watchOS 5 for Apple Watch includes Competitions for Activity Sharing; yoga and hiking as workout types; workout start and stop reminders; pace alerts, rolling miles, and cadence for outdoor running workouts; Apple Podcast syncing and streaming; a new Walkie-Talkie app for watch-to-watch communication; new data sources on the Siri watch face; grouped notifications; and much more. In betas 2 and 3, we also saw watch face tweaks, Walkie-Talkie activated, and eventually Raise To Speak Siri turned on: 2: Walkie-Talkie app now shows friend suggestions 2: New Now Playing indicator on watch face 2: Siri voice volume now independent of system alert volume 3: New Breathe app icon (matches in-app design) For a comprehensive look at all of the changes in the first watchOS 5 beta, sit back and watch Jeff Benjamin’s 13 minute long look at 50 new features in watchOS 5 on YouTube.com/9to5Mac: New in beta 4? Walkie-Talkie availability no longer forces persistent icon on watch face, fades in and out instead Refresh for updates! We’re updating our Apple Watches and digging in immediately. Also share tips at tips@9to5mac or zac@9to5mac.com and on Twitter @9to5mac and @apollozac. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More. Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news:<doc-sep>‘Raise To Speak’ Siri is a new Apple Watch feature included in the watchOS 5 update that allows you to activate the voice assistant without saying ‘Hey Siri’ or pressing any buttons. Raise to Speak was first announced at WWDC in early June, but the feature didn’t appear to work when watchOS 5 beta 1 and beta 2 were first released. That’s changed for several testers in the last few days however. Here’s how to double-check you have Raise to Speak enabled and how to try it: To start, you’ll need to have iOS 12 beta installed on your iPhone and watchOS 5 beta installed on your Apple Watch. watchOS 5 works with Apple Watch Series 1 and above; the first-generation Apple Watch is not supported. iOS 12 has a free public beta program, but watchOS 5 beta requires a paid developer membership. watchOS betas are generally more risky, too, because there is no downgrade path. If you’re running watchOS 5 beta, you can double-check that the new feature is enabled by going to Settings → General → Siri and making sure Raise To Speak is toggled on. Note that the feature still appears to be rolling out slowly in beta so some users are still unable to use it despite it being toggled on; I recommend testing every few days if you’re curious. Once the feature is present, using Raise to Speak with Siri is super simple — at least when it works. Simply raise your wrist toward your face as if to check the time, then speak when the display turns on and Siri will activate and listen to what you say. (Presumably, you’ll also need ‘Wake Screen on Wrist Raise’ enabled in Settings → General → Wake Screen, but I can’t imagine using an Apple Watch with that toggled off.) The idea is that talking to Siri becomes much faster and more natural by not requiring you to tap a complication, hold the Digital Crown, or even say ‘Hey Siri’ before a command. watchOS 5 instead looks for a specific motion and decides whether or not it matches what it believes is the common gesture of bringing your watch to your mouth to speak. You can simply raise your wrist and say “Tell Benjamin I’m running a few minutes late” then Siri will send the message for you — super fast and natural. Another advantage will be optionally disabling ‘Hey Siri’ which is a separate toggle from ‘Raise To Speak’ Siri. If you’ve ever had your Apple Watch respond to a ‘Hey Siri’ command intended for HomePod, you’ll appreciate being able to rely on ‘Raise To Speak’ for Apple Watch instead of ‘Hey Siri’ — it’s like having different trigger phrases for different devices without actually changing the trigger phrase. Detecting the specific motion prevents Siri from firing off every time your watch lights up. For example, it won’t listen when you just turn your wrist to check the time or tap the screen to turn on the display. Siri also appears to only listen for a short few seconds after you raise your wrist so speaking after several seconds won’t trigger Siri. That’s how Raise To Speak Siri is supposed to work at least. watchOS 5 is still in early beta for now and it’s possible the feature will be fine tuned before it ships. In practice, my experience has been rather mixed after a few days of testing. When Raise To Speak Siri works as advertised, the experience wows you. If it doesn’t work as expected, trying the command again by reverting to appending ‘Hey Siri’ to your command or using a button can slow you down. The bigger risk isn’t Siri not activating when intended but activating accidentally. In the last few days of testing, I’ve had multiple misfires in various situations. Once when explaining how Control Center works to my dad which is understandable, again when ordering at a drive-through which caught me off guard, and this morning when putting my son in his car seat while talking. The last accidental Siri activation interpreted the conversation as a command to call someone in my contacts list at 6:30 am — not ideal! — but the feature is still in early beta stages so it’s too soon to judge it yet. (I will say that having Siri with voice feedback is very helpful in this situation as the voice response is very detectable compared to a wrist tap. Apple Watch Series 3 is the first model to have voice feedback which you can toggle in Settings → General → Siri in the Voice Feedback section. Options include Always On, Control With Silent Mode, and Headphones Only.) Hopefully Raise To Speak Siri is fine tuned over the summer and impresses when watchOS 5 is released later this fall. If so, Apple Watch will have a unique advantage over iPhone and iPad, HomePod and Apple TV, and Mac: talking to Siri but just talking. Related Stories: Subscribe to 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news: FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More. Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news:<doc-sep>Screenshot : David Murphy If you want to play with the “early AF” release of iOS 12, or run around in the deserts of macOS Mojave, you normally have to give Apple $99 for the privilege of developing apps for its platform—apps it’ll ultimately take a 30 percent cut of (unless you offer a subscription and keep a user for longer than a year, but now I’m getting minute). That gets you access to the just-announced developer betas, which arrive (and tend to be updated) before the official public betas of Apple’s new operating systems Advertisement However, if you don’t feel like paying money to play around with a pre-release version of an operating system—and you don’t want to wait for the public betas to hit—then you can go “unofficially” grab the brand-new betas for iOS 12, macOS Mojave, tvOS 12, and watchOS 5 right now. I put “unofficially” in quotes, because these are the real beta profiles you’d otherwise download straight from Apple itself. The files are being hosted elsewhere though, which means a few things: One, it made me slightly apprehensive to download and install them at first and, two, these links could disappear at any time. (Let me know if they do and I’ll try to find more.) That said, a few Reddit commentators who have more familiarity with this process have already mentioned that getting a big green checkmark when installing these profiles—on iOS, at least—means they’re legit and certified by Apple. They aren’t some random piece of malware disguised as a beta profile, which you should certainly think about if you’re ever installing a profile that you didn’t acquire directly from a reputable source. See that green checkmark underneath AppleCare Profile Signing Certificate? Super important. If your iOS 12 beta software profile doesn’t have that, don’t install it. Screenshot : David Murphy Download Apple’s developer beta profiles So, that warning aside—and the general warning that these are early versions of Apple’s operating systems that may or may not cause havoc on your primary devices if you install them—here are the beta profile links (with credit to Redditor kevin777787 for publishing them): For iOS 12 and watchOS 5, you’ll need to download the profile using Safari on your iPhone or iPad. Since the primary links are hosted on the not-so-pretty uploadfiles.io site, makes sure you’re clicking on the big “slow download” button once it activates—and only that button, located to the left of the “Turbo Download” button, and nothing else. Advertisement Once you download the beta profiles, installing them on your device should be a pretty clear process. (The installation process will first ask you to uninstall any other beta profiles you might have on your device, if you have any leftover from, say, iOS 11. So, if you want to save a step, do that before you tap on the link.) To get macOS Mojave, you can use any browser you want to grab the .DMG file. Once you download it, run it, and the App Store listing for the new operating system should immediately pop up once the small beta installation utility is done. Download and proceed as normal. Advertisement He who controls the spiced apples controls the universe. Screenshot : David Murphy For tvOS 12, you’ll have to get a little creative to install the beta version of the operating system on your device, but Apple spells out the process pretty plainly on its site. (I don’t have an Apple TV, or else I’d also happily walk you through that process myself.)<doc-sep>
Apple today seeded the fourth beta of an upcoming watchOS 5 update to developers, two weeks after releasing the third beta and more than a month after introducing the software at the Worldwide Developers Conference. To install the beta, you'll need the proper configuration profile, which can be obtained through the Apple Developer Center. Once the profile is in place, the watchOS 5 beta can be downloaded using the dedicated Apple Watch app on the iPhone by going to General --> Software Update. To update, the Apple Watch needs to have 50 percent battery, it must be placed on an Apple Watch charger, and it has to be in range of the iPhone. It would be wise to install the beta on a secondary device instead of a primary device given that this is an early version of the watchOS 5 software that still has bugs to be worked out. watchOS 5 is a major update to watchOS, introducing Activity Competitions so you can compete on workouts with friends, Walkie-Talkie with push-to-talk functionality for quickly communicating with the people you talk to most, and auto workout detection to make it easier to start and stop workouts if you forget. Other new features include an improved Siri watch face with support for third-party apps through Siri Shortcuts, a dedicated Apple Podcasts app, new Workout types that include Yoga and Hiking, new features for runners, WebKit support for viewing some web content on Apple Watch, and enhanced notifications, which will make notifications on the Apple Watch interactive. Early software betas often introduce new functionality, so we'll update this post if anything new is found in the fourth beta of watchOS 5. watchOS 5 is only available to developers and will not be provided to public beta testers (because there's no way to downgrade Apple Watch software), so non-developers will need to wait until the software is officially released in the fall to try it out. The watchOS 5 update runs on all Series 1, Series 2, and Series 3 Apple Watch models, but it is not available for the first-generation "Series 0" Apple Watch models. What's new in beta 4: The Walkie-Talkie icon on the Apple Watch face is no longer persistent. It will now be displayed briefly when lifting your wrist before fading away. Walkie-Talkie also appears to obey your Do Not Disturb settings, so other Walkie-Talkie users are not able to contact you when Do Not Disturb is turned on.