iOS 18.4 Beta Now Unavailable Across Entire iPhone 12 Lineup and More

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Apple last week seeded the first iOS 18.4 beta to developers for testing, but the software update has been pulled for some devices due to issues.

Generic iOS 18
According to MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris, the first iOS 18.4 beta is no longer available for installation on any of the iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, or iPhone 12 Pro Max models, along with select older iPad Air and entry-level iPad models.

The first iOS 18.4 beta was causing some iPhone 12 models and other affected devices to experience a "boot loop," rendering the device unusable. This is one reason why Apple always stresses backing up your iPhone before installing iOS betas, as pre-release software can experience critical bugs and issues from time to time.


There may have been other issues affecting some of the cellular iPad Air models in particular, rather than the boot loop problem.

Apple also pulled the first watchOS 11.4 beta for Apple Watch Series 6 models.

Apple should eventually make iOS 18.4 and watchOS 11.4 betas available again for the affected devices, but it is unclear when that will happen.

Unfortunately, this is far from the first time this has happened.

Related Forums: iOS 18, iPadOS 18

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Top Rated Comments

Reverend Benny Avatar
Reverend Benny
13 months ago
Its called a beta for a reason.
I'm glad there's beta testers out there willing to test things so that people like myself get a less buggy experience when the software is released.
So, Thank you all beta testers out there..
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
TechWhisperer Avatar
TechWhisperer
13 months ago
Not an iPhone 12 owner but still gonna skip this one. Lol.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
platinumaqua Avatar
platinumaqua
13 months ago
I know it’s not a stable release, but such issues should’ve been caught during the alpha stage.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Lizzard899 Avatar
Lizzard899
13 months ago
Ive always said ios 18 was a bad update. Even for my own iphone se 3rd generation. It doubled my icloud storage for no reason and it wont delete texts that ive manually deleted myself from recently deleted. It wont delete text from the server end. It usually takes up to 4 days to delete on the server end and its not doing this. Ive reported these two issues on the feedback page. They prob wont fix it. Heres a discussionn about the Problems on ios 18.3.1 ('https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255973148?sortBy=rank') on the apple support page. You can read everyones issues. Hopefully they will report them on the feedback page but I doubt they will be fixed
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ghostface147 Avatar
ghostface147
13 months ago

What was your biggest complaint for mail? Don’t keep us hanging.
Get an email notification, tap on it.

Expected result:

Go directly to the email, carry on throughout the day.

Actual result:

Goes to inbox instead and freezes the mail app. Wait a little bit, then you can work with the email.

With Beta 1, this is finally resolved.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jasonsmith_88 Avatar
jasonsmith_88
13 months ago

Is it OK? Or the more time comes by the more unstable apple software is?
Apple software has become atrocious. I’m still on iOS 17 which is buggy, but less buggy than 18.

However, my 2 MacBooks have been updated to Sequoia. Keyboard shortcuts often don’t register the first time they’re pressed (CMD + Tab etc). Custom keyboard shortcuts configured in Keyboard Settings randomly reset/change by themselves (because every app uses a different shortcut to switch tabs, I use this setting to standardise the shortcuts). You cannot interact with anything while it’s animating (eg click an item in the menu bar to show it, then click to hide it, you must wait for the animation before you can show it again). Dialog boxes often don’t receive focus automatically and can only be focused using a pointer device. On one of my Macbooks, I cannot remove the bluetooth icon from the menubar - it just comes back by itself (even if I set it to hidden in Control Centre prefs). My old-school full-size Apple keyboard (A1243) doesn’t work with my M3; it only works with my Intel MacBook. On the M3, CMD + trackpad tap (to open a link in a new tab) doesn’t always work. I had the same issue on my M1 in 2022. The bug still exists after three years and three generations of machines and thousands of people complaining online.

This is just a tiny list of challenges I face daily using Apple products. Really starting to get sick of it.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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