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Careful what you wish for.
While Apple announced iOS 17 during the WWDC 2023 event on June 5, a Developer Beta, usually made available behind a developer account, was made accessible to all a few days after, and already, a bug is causing problems for some.
According to users running iOS 17 Beta 1, sending an SMS causes iOS 17 to throw an error of “Message failed to send”.
A developer beta is meant to be installed on tester iPhones to make sure that there are no bugs when running apps. Or if there are bugs, they can be squashed by the time the new update launches.
It’s not something we ever recommend using on daily devices. But, Apple is also to blame here for how this was made available to everyone.
According to multiple reports on Reddit, it appears that for some people at least, the messages are actually being sent correctly. The recipient continues to receive the messages as expected, which is the main thing here. Unfortunately, there’s no way to confirm that without calling the person you just sent an SMS to, somewhat defeating the whole point.
“Yeah was working fine sending texts and now bam failed to send but is actually sending multiple copies of the same text, I’m on ATT btw,” one user posted. “So apparently the messages still go through. I asked my friend and he said he got the message although it’s still showing as unable to deliver,” another Reddit user commented.
Now is probably a very good time to remind everyone that this is the first developer beta of iOS 17 and that bugs are to be expected. We strongly suggest that iOS 17 is only installed on test devices right now, and it should absolutely not be installed on devices that are mission-critical.
Apple hasn’t confirmed exactly when iOS 17 will be released to the public, but we expect it in or around September. That’s also when we expect Apple to announce the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro lineups, too.
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Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to ‘explain’ those thoughts in more detail, too.
Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn’t looked back. Since then he’s seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He’s been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.
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