Apple’s iOS 15.3 Beta 1 Download for Developers Leaked

The first developer build of iOS and iPadOS 15.3 beta 1 was leaked online earlier today (via @iSpeedtestOS).  The leak comes just four days after Apple started rolling out iOS 15.2 to the public on Monday.

It looks like somebody leaked the iOS 15.3 beta 1 (Build 19D5026g) ipsw file for iPhone 11 and XR.
Judging from that, we should see iOS 15.3 Developer Beta 1 fairly soon as expected. Now we know it exists 😉
(No, I can’t share the link to that ipsw) https://t.co/eQQTpwXh1H

— iSpeedtestOS (@iSpeedtestOS) December 17, 2021

An analysis of the leaked IPSW file (build 19D5026g) indicates that iOS 15.3 is going to be a pretty incremental update that will be light on new features and mainly focus on bug fixes, performance improvements, and security enhancements instead.

While iOS 15.2 brought a whopping 38 different security and privacy fixes, it also came with a good chunk of new features.

As for iOs 15.3, here’s a list of the few new features it will bring, as discovered in the leaked developer beta:

• Changes to working for the newly launched Child Safety features.
• Minor tweaks to the Podcasts app.
• Changes to text for the automatic download of magazines for offline reading in the Apple News+ app.

While this is only the first of what will be many iterations of the iOS 15.3 beta before it is ready for release, it does foreshadow that there won’t be all that many new features to look forward to.

The Universal Control feature Apple announced at WWDC in June likely won’t be coming in iOS 15.3 either, and was delayed to Spring 2022 earlier this week. The leak also included the first developer beta builds of watchOS 8.4 and tvOS 15.3.

The download links for the iOS 15.3 developer beta that were leaked were actually found to have come directly from the source code of Apple’s developer downloads page. Apple apparently planned to release the beta builds on Thursday but pulled them at the last minute and simply hid the entries in the website’s code.

It is unclear why Apple decided against rolling out these beta builds when they were supposed to go out, but it does look like we’ll be getting at least our first taste of iOS 15.3 before Christmas.