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Do Not Disturb While Driving Now Live on iOS 11 Beta 2

Jun 22, 2017 03:16 PM

Jun 22, 2017 06:24 PM

Woman driving a car while using a smartphone.

Attention iOS 11 Developer Beta users — Dev Beta 2 is now ready for a software update. If you're running the beta already, you're going to want to download this one because it combines two excellent features: much, much needed bug fixes, as well as Do Not Disturb While Driving.

Apple announced Do Not Disturb While Driving at WWDC earlier this month, a feature that blocks all incoming notifications while the phone detects you are driving. Apple did not include this in the first beta release, so seeing the feature in Beta 2 is a welcome surprise.

Users won't have to do much for the phone to activate Do Not Disturb While Driving — on the bus today, my phone automatically prompted to ask if I wanted to enable the feature. I declined, of course, since I wasn't driving, and would just be depriving myself of notifications until I stepped off the bus.

It's great that Apple is making it easy to turn on Do Not Disturb, however, it does seem a little counterintuitive — the driver would have to be looking at their phone while the car is in motion to see this request, which is ... not ideal.

Apple, if you're reading this, I have a small suggestion — make Do Not Disturb While Driving available as part of the initial setup after installing iOS 11. Users can safely read through what it does, and choose to activate it then and there, without having to be in motion first.

Besides Do Not Disturb While Driving, Apple has included a slew of bug fixes. Users on iOS 11 Dev Beta 1 will notice performance improvements across the board and should see fewer bugs and hiccups on Dev Beta 2. Although, personally, my home screen wallpaper kept changing its orientation on its own immediately after downloading the update, so it's certainly not going to be perfect.

For the complete list of changes made to Beta 2, check out 9to5Mac's list here.

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Cover image by MORE MEDIA/YouTube

The next big software update for iPhone is coming sometime in April and will include a Food section in Apple News+, an easy-to-miss new Ambient Music app, Priority Notifications thanks to Apple Intelligence, and updates to apps like Mail, Photos, Podcasts, and Safari. See what else is coming to your iPhone with the iOS 18.4 update.