Today's the day – the betas of iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 operating systems are finally available for the public to download onto their devices.

But before we explain how to get these onto your iPhone and iPad, we urge readers to exercise some caution. Although Apple has been working on these betas for several weeks already, they aren't due to be finished until September. So between now and then you should expect to encounter some bugs and glitches. In some cases, some applications will not yet work properly – or work at all – on devices running these betas.

Read More:

• These are the iPhones and iPads that work with iOS 15 and iPadOS 15
• These are the biggest new features coming to your iPhone this fall with iOS 15
• Apple brings more privacy controls with new OS updates this fall

If you are happy to install the betas, then you can do so right away. But first, you should make sure your iPhone or iPad has been fully backed up, either to a computer or to iCloud. That way, if the worst were to happen, you can reset the device and restore it to how it was when you last backed up. You can find out more on how to back-up Apple devices here.

Once you have done that, visit this page of the Apple website to sign up with the beta program. The page will ask you to sign in with your Apple ID, and read and accept Apple's public beta terms and conditions.

Next, switch to your iPhone or iPad, depending on which you want to get the beta first, open Safari and head to beta.apple.com/profile. You will then be asked to log in with the same Apple ID you logged in with in the earlier step.

Some of the new features included as part of iOS 15 Apple

Now it's just a case of following the on-screen instructions to begin downloading the iOS 15 Beta Configuration Profile. This is a small piece of code that tells Apple's servers your device wants to download the iOS 15 beta, instead of the next available iOS 14 update. You might need to enter your device passcode to download the profile, and your device will reboot once it has been downloaded.

Finally, go to the Settings app of your device and navigate to General then Software Update. The iOS 15 public beta should then appear, ready to be tapped on, downloaded and installed. After that, it'll be loaded onto your device just like any other Apple software update. Once rebooted, you'll be looking at the latest public beta of the shiny new iOS 15.

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