What’s New in iOS 27 Beta 3: Here are All the Changes

Apple rolled out iOS 27 beta 3 and more to developers yesterday, and the public beta should follow in a couple of weeks.

This one landed as a fairly hefty download, coming in at 15.04 GB on the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and it arrived alongside a whole batch of other betas including iPadOS 27, macOS 27 Golden Gate, tvOS, HomePod OS, visionOS, and watchOS 27, plus a beta 4 for iOS 26.6.

According to Aaron from Zollotech, beta 3 is packed with small tweaks rather than one big headline feature. There’s a modem update baked in, so anyone who was dealing with connectivity trouble on earlier betas might get some relief. Performance is said to feel extra smooth this time around, though the phone does run warm right after installing while it indexes in the background. Battery life is still rough, which is pretty normal for an early beta.

Here’s a rundown of everything new in iOS 27 beta 3:

• Modem update that may fix earlier connectivity issues
• Music app tweaks, where the star and three dot menu icons no longer sit inside a highlighted circle
• Reminders icon changes, with filled-in circles and no highlight ring
• Control Center now shows Wi-Fi and 5G at the top, with some users seeing 5G Plus depending on their carrier
• Siri visual updates, including the word “beta” now outlined next to Siri instead of in the title
• Expressive voice preview on supported devices, letting you adjust pace and expressivity, though it’s American English only for now
• New Siri animation with stronger reflections shadowing down onto the icon or widget below it
• An “optimizing search and Siri” message, which is the same indexing process under a new name, though the info link on it is currently broken
• A neat wallpaper effect where pulling down inside an app reveals the subject and background of your wallpaper before switching over, working everywhere except the home screen
• Shortcuts changes, with a plus button now at the bottom and a new setting to open shortcuts straight into the editor or into the describe a shortcut view
• Updated setup wallpaper, moving the first-time setup screens from the iOS 26 look to the iOS 27 design
• Photos update, where the “look up nutrition” option on food pictures now uses a fork and knife icon instead of the search icon
• Icon refinements, with softer specular highlights and clear icons that no longer carry a bold outline
• Feedback app icon is now a solid consistent colour instead of a gradient
• New Find My splash screen highlighting flexible location sharing, a redesigned Apple Watch app, and location improvements
• New TV app splash screen promoting Formula 1 and MLS on Apple TV

On the bug fix side, the “set up Siri” prompt now actually takes you to the right menu, the keyboard issue in Notes and other apps appears fixed including in landscape, and the Wi-Fi disconnects from beta 1 and beta 2 seem to be sorted out. One bug that’s still hanging around is a wallpaper saturation issue, where the wallpaper looks saturated when you pull down from the top and then desaturates on the home screen.

Apple’s release notes list 17 categories of resolved issues, up from 15 in beta 2, but there are still 59 categories of known issues, up from 56.

As for what’s next, Aaron expects the iOS 26.6 release candidate could show up as early as Monday, with iOS 27 beta 4 more likely arriving around the 20th, followed by the first public beta that same week. The full public release should land in mid-September around the iPhone 18 launch. So far, the iOS 27 betas have been pretty smooth, almost like butter.