Should You Install iOS 12 on Your iPad? Here Are 4 Things to Expect

Apple on Monday released the first build of iOS 12 to the general public, allowing everyday iOS users to sign up and participate in early-stage testing, enjoy the many new features as they become available, and provide the company with crucial feedback to help it make iOS 12 even better before the software officially touches down this fall.

iOS 12 is all about performance enhancements and fine-tuning at the CPU level which is intended to greatly improve speed, latency, and response time even on older devices like the iPhone 5s and iPad Air. In addition, Apple baked a number of useful features and UI tweaks into iOS 12 — some of which are entirely new, some long overdue, and others which even appear to hint at some of the company’s upcoming products. Continue reading to learn what you can expect in iOS 12 for iPad.

4 Major UI Changes

Apple made several changes to the system UI and configuration of icons in iOS 12. For example, instead of accessing the Control Center by swiping up from the bottom of the screen as you would in iOS 11, Apple appears to have moved Control Center to the top of the screen, where it's accessible by swiping down from the upper right-hand corner of the display on the iPad.

In what may be confirmation of previous rumors, Apple has also reconfigured the upper iOS status bar of icons on iPad, including battery percentage, clock, and network/connectivity indicators. Specifically, the digital clock icon (in addition to a new date indicator) has been shifted from the center of the status bar way off to the left-and side — while indicators for battery percentage, Wi-Fi/LTE, and Bluetooth have all been shifted off to the opposite side — leaving the center of the upper status bar clear of any icons.

As noted in our previous report, this seemingly unnecessary change could actually be due to the fact that Apple is setting the stage for its new iPad Pro model boasting a TrueDepth and Face ID camera in lieu of a hardware home button which could be unveiled this fall.

3 A New Measure App

Present in the iOS 12 public beta release is a useful app called Measure, which Apple mentioned briefly during its WWDC 2018 keynote earlier this month. Measure relies on the company’s ARKit 2.0 framework to provide users with an easy and accurate way to measure objects digitally within their actual  environment. Note that the measure app is only available on the 5th-gen 9.7" iPad and newer; and the iPhone 6s and newer.

2 Great Performance Improvements

Speed enhancements present in iOS 12 beta are resoundingly evident right off the bat, even when simply navigating system menus. Not only are utilities like the camera and keyboard quicker to open and appear onscreen, but as Apple promised, apps launch much faster too — all but confirming the company’s move to greatly optimize overall performance when carrying-out everyday tasks.

1 Screen Time and Other New Features

Also discovered in iOS 12 beta Settings include the all-new Screen Time feature. From Settings, scroll down and tap Screen Time underneath Do Not Disturb, where you’ll be able to configure settings including Downtime, set pre-approved app limits, block inappropriate content from appearing onscreen and more.

Of course, there’s much more to iOS 12 that’s coming down the pike. Breakout new features including Grouped Notifications, Group FaceTime calling with up to 32 people at once, improved Siri functionality — via the WorkFlow app spinoff, Siri Shortcuts — Memoji on iPhone X, and even an enhanced color wheel in Markup makes iOS 12 a worthy upgrade over iOS 11!

Download iOS 12 Now

We don’t recommend downloading beta software on your primary device, since they can be buggy. In any case, be sure to fully backup any device to iTunes or iCloud before proceeding.

• The public iOS 12 beta should be available as an over-the-air update to users who are part of Apple’s beta program — provided that the proper certificate is installed on a device.
• If you’re not signed up for the beta program, you can do so at Apple’s website. From there, just follow the instruction to get all set up to test beta software.