Apple just launched the public iOS 27 beta 2, mostly centered around small quality-of-life updates.
The iOS 27 beta 2, which should be identical to the fourth developer beta released earlier this week, isn’t as momentous as the first beta was. That one brought over the bulk of iOS 27’s new features, including the Siri AI beta experience, while the second beta seems more focused on making everything the first beta introduced work a little better.
Still, there are some new things to try. If you want to check them out, read our guide for how to install public betas first. As always, make sure you create a fresh device backup ahead of time.
Keep your Apple TV library stocked with fresh downloads
If you love Apple TV shows like Widow’s Bay, and you find yourself away from reliable internet access regularly (in other words, you travel a lot), there’s a new option in the Apple TV app to enable automatic downloads. This will, as its name suggests, automatically download the next two episodes in any show in your “Continue Watching” queue, and then delete them when you’re finished watching.
This might take up some space in your device storage, so keep that in mind, but it’ll also ensure you have something to watch when the airplane WiFi isn’t working.
New and enhanced Siri voices
Siri AI is the headliner for all of iOS 27, and the new public beta added a couple of things to try out with regards to voices.
Specifically, you can now mess with the Pace and Expressivity sliders for two American-accented Siri voices to give you an idea of how much customization each voice will have once Siri AI is fully baked and iOS 27 is really out. If you want to do this with other Siri voices, you’ll have to wait, and the sliders are apparently shown as “coming soon” for every other option.
Speaking of other options, the new update variation apparently adds some new voices and kinds of English accents to try out. You won’t be able to customize those yet, but they might be worth experimenting with anyway.
Increased AirPods control in Control Center
Lastly, as far as new additions go, Apple made a small but meaningful change to Control Center. If you own a pair of AirPods Pro and use the Adaptive Audio feature, you can access the slider to adjust how much outside audio the AirPods allow in within Control Center now. This isn’t massive, obviously, but it will save time since you won’t have to go into the AirPods settings menu anymore.
As a bonus, try Siri AI
The new iOS 27 public beta 2 doesn’t introduce any major changes to Siri AI beyond what we’ve seen before, but as a general reminder, the enhanced version of Siri is available to try in the iOS 27 beta, as long as you have an iPhone 15 Pro or newer.
Once you have the iOS 27 beta installed, what you’ll need to do is ensure Apple Intelligence is turned on in your Settings menu. After that, follow these steps:
Go to Settings
Tap Siri
Tap “Try the new Siri (beta)”
This will put you on a waitlist to try Siri AI. No, you won’t be able to try it right away, but it shouldn’t take more than five to 10 days at the absolute maximum to get approved.
Source: https://mashable.com/tech/apple-ios-27-public-beta-2-new-features
