iOS 17 beta testing — 7 things that still frustrate me in Apple’s software update

It’s been six weeks since the iOS 17 public beta debuted, giving people plenty of time to familiarize themselves with the changes coming to Apple’s iPhone software with the full release this fall.

If you’ve installed the iOS 17 public beta, I’m going to assume your experience is a lot like the one I described in my iOS 17 hands-on — an uneventful upgrade that nevertheless manages to introduce some welcome enhancements and new features to the iPhone.

Which is not to say there haven’t been hiccups along the way.

I’m not referring to bugs, though like plenty of beta releases, iOS 17 has its shares of those. The two most persistant I’ve run into are on-screen widgets that don’t show any data — my Move ring from the Fitness app occasionally shows up as blank — or the on-screen keyboard momentarily disappearing from the Messages app. These are momentary annoyances, certainly, but I imagine they’ll be smoothed out by the fall. The blank widgets, for example, have become less of a problem with each subsequent update to the public beta.

No, the hiccups I’ve run into are the features that are more or less working as intended, though maybe not as smoothly as they should. In some cases, it’ll be a matter of Apple fine-tuning things while in others, it’s just taking time for my brain to relearn how to do something in the updated OS.

Nevertheless, these are the biggest iOS 17 frustrations I’ve run into during my time with the beta. Maybe they can serve as a guide to you once you’re ready to try the new operating system, whether that’s now or once the full version arrives in the fall.

Live Voicemail inconsistencies

List all the promised changes in iOS 17, and the one that likely generates the most anticipation is Live Voicemail. That’s the addition to the phone app, where messages from callers appear in real time, transcribed on your iPhone screen. That lets you know if it’s an important call you need to take right now or something that can go to voicemail. It figures to be a real time-saver, not to mention a way to keep spam calls at bay.

The trouble I’ve run into is that Live Voicemail doesn’t always leap into action in a predictable way with every…