Apple's CEO Tim Cook today said the iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS 26 developer betas are the company's most popular developer betas ever.
"It's wonderful to see great momentum building for our platforms," said Cook, on a conference call discussing Apple's quarterly earnings results. "iOS 26, macOS 26, and iPadOS 26 are by far the most popular developer betas we've had."
Apple released the developer betas immediately following its WWDC 2025 keynote in June. Cook did not provide any specific installation numbers, nor did he comment on the public betas of the updates, which were released last week.
Jason Snell shared a transcript of Cook's full remarks on Six Colors.
Two years ago, Apple dropped the requirement to pay $99 per year for an Apple Developer Program membership in order to access its developer betas, allowing anyone who creates an Apple Developer account to install them for free. This change has surely resulted in a larger number of non-developers installing the developer betas, even though Apple recommends that average customers wait for the public betas.
In addition, the new Liquid Glass design across Apple's platforms is a major visual change, which developers might want to prepare for. And many non-developers likely wanted to play around with the new design too, without having to wait until the public betas were released in July, or the final releases come out in September.
