watchOS 8 beta 2 update goes live (Full Changelog)

Apple released the watchOS 8 beta 2 version update to developers today. This is the first update since WWDC 2021 at the beginning of this month. It is expected that Apple will launch a public beta version soon (official announcement in July), Now let’s take a look at today’s update.

According to the update instructions on Apple’s developer website, this version update is mainly to optimize and fix some problems of the previous version. The following are the update instructions related to ordinary users. Check the complete list of the changelog.

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App Store

New Features in watchOS 8 beta 2

• The jws instance properties on Transaction and renewalInfo are now jwsRepresentation. (78734829)

• The request(with:) type method on Product has been renamed to products(for:). (79410910)

• The listener type properties on Transaction, Product.SubscriptionInfo.Status and Storefront are now updates. The nested AsyncSequence conforming structures are now Transactions, Statuses, and Storefronts respectively. Both TransactionSequence and TransactionListener are now Transactions. (79034347)

• StoreKitError.userDidNotAuthenticate is no longer available; use StoreKitError.userCancelled instead. (78270199)

• Subscription renewals aren’t automatically pushed to your app through the StoreKit 2 APIs in the App Store sandbox environment. Transaction and renewal information may not be immediately available. (78463355)

Resolved in watchOS 8 beta 2

• Fixed an issue in client apps that used the status listener and didn’t recieve status updates. Changing the Product.SubscriptionInfo.Status of a subscription now correctly invokes the listener. (78375457)

• Fixed an issue that occurred when calling latest(for:) on Transaction, or accessing the latestTransaction property on a Product value, the method called didn’t return the latest Transaction for the given productID. (78466898)

Clock

Known Issues

• Watch faces you create by using a photo on your watch might not retain the expected crop or zoom level. (74818950)

Contacts

Resolved in watchOS 8 beta 2

• Fixed an issue with editing a contact on your watch that resulted in losing the contact photo. (78715908)

CoreMIDI

Resolved in watchOS 8 beta 2

• Fixed the watchOS SDK headers included in the Core MIDI framework. (74727946)

Debugging

Known Issues

• Fixed an issue that crashed processes in libdispatch when running apps with the LIBDISPATCH_COOPERATIVE_POOL_STRICT environment variable set to 1. (78177966, 78184764)

Dictation

Known Issues

• Transcription might not function as expected. (77094712)

  Workaround: Restart your watch.

Focus

Known Issues

• You’re unable to switch to a Focus other than Do Not Disturb using Siri. (78263540)
• Apps installed only on your watch aren’t available in the Focus settings allow list. (76064919)

Resolved in watchOS 8 beta 2

• Made Focus status in third party apps available. (75049369)
• Fixed an issue so you can control Focus mode independently from your phone. (77749665)

Home

Resolved in watchOS 8 beta 2

• Fixed an issue that made certain settings unavailable. You can now change Mode settings for thermostats, security systems, and smart TVs. (78415994)

Logging

Known Issues

• For every process crash, watchOS generates two crash logs. (76650102)

Maps

Resolved in watchOS 8 beta 2

• Fixed an issue that caused Maps to quit unexpectedly after you tapped a transit station. (78514479)

Deprecations

• MKPinAnnotationView and MapPin are deprecated in this beta. (78536295)

Music

Known Issues

• When using Watch apps, MusicKit might be unable to generate a developer token. (78478620)

  Workaround: Register the bundle identifier of your WatchKit Extension target as a separate App ID in the Developer portal, and enable the MusicKit App Service for the new App ID.

Networking

Deprecations

• Support for cleartext HTTP URL schemes for Proxy Automatic Configuration (PAC) is now deprecated. Use only HTTPS URL schemes for PAC. This affects all PAC configurations including, but not limited to, configurations set via Settings, System Preferences, profiles, and URLSession APIs such as connectionProxyDictionary, and CFNetworkExecuteProxyAutoConfigurationURL(_:_:_:_:). If you configure a cleartext HTTP PAC URL, the system may upgrade it to HTTPS during PAC file loads. Web Proxy Auto-Discovery (WPAD) Protocol via DNS isn’t affected. Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Option 252 WPAD may attempt to upgrade cleartext HTTP URLs to HTTPS during PAC file loads. (61981845)

Privacy

Known Issues

• Record App Activity logs might contain duplicate entries for the same access. (77168882)
• Record App Activity defaults to off after a software update or restore from backup. (77466774)

Resolved in watchOS 8 beta 2

• Fixed Record App Activity log timestamps might to accurately reflect timezone changes. (78278614)

• Fixed Reset Location and Privacy to correctly clear Record App Activity logs. (76568242)
• Fixed Record App Activity logs to export as expected. (77626955)
• Fixed an issue on a Watch configured using Family Setup, choosing Settings > General > Reset > Reset Location and Privacy didn’t reset Privacy Settings for Focus or Nearby Interaction. (77999006)

Schooltime

Known Issues

• Time Sensitive and Allowed notifications specified in Focus settings will alert during Schooltime. (77032571)

Shazam

Known Issues

• ShazamKit might be unable to generate a developer token in apps using Shazam Catalog. (78589082)

  Workaround: Register the bundle identifier of your WatchKit Extension target as a separate App ID in the developer portal, then enable the ShazamKit App Service for this new App ID.

Resolved in watchOS 8 beta 2

• Fixed an issue with the availablity of the songs property. (78589271)

Software Update

Known Issues

• You might be unable to update your device using Software Update if less than 500 MB of free storage is available. (78474912)

SwiftUI

New Features in watchOS 8 beta 2

• You can now initialize Text with a FormatStyle. (72159423)

• While searching, if you tap a suggestion that uses the searchCompletion(_:) modifier, the suggestion list now disappears rather than displaying the single suggestion you selected. (76965399)

• Customize the prompt of a search field that a searchable modifier configures using the prompt parameter instead of the previous title parameter. (77988967)

Known Issues

• You can’t push to a third screen after popping from a third screen in the navigation stack. (79076444)

• If you create a Text view from an AttributedString that contains a morphology attribute and then interpolate the Text view inside a LocalizedStringKey, the attributes of the AttributedString don’t affect the displayed text. (78914478)

  For example:

  Text("\(Text(attributedString)) friend(s)")

• AsyncImage in List sometimes cancels image downloads prematurely. (78187465)

• LocationButton might draw incorrectly when customized via SwiftUI. (79370118)

Resolved in watchOS 8 beta 2

• Push to detail in collapsed multi-column navigation view now works to arbitrary depth. (77919440)

• Fixed an issue that caused a TextField in a ForEach to update the incorrect text binding. (78168257)
• Fixed tinted buttons inside swipe actions to appear as expected. (78034424)
• Fixed an issue that caused passing .search to the View.onSubmit(of:\_:) modifier to not respond to search submissions as expected. (77967972)

UIKit

Resolved in watchOS 8 beta 2

• Fixed an issue that caused an exception using the underline color attribute of an AttributedString in AppKit and UIKit. (78409689)

Workout

Resolved in watchOS 8 beta 2

• Fixed an issue that caused a delay on your watch when starting a Fitness+ workout from your iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV. (78483604)
• Fixed GymKit metrics to update while your watch is in Always On mode. (78018924)

Xcode

Known Issues

• MusicKit functionality, such as loading content with music requests, doesn’t work in simulated devices. (78559381)

  Workaround: Test your app’s MusicKit functionality on a physical device.

Resolved in watchOS 8 beta 2

• Fixed apps authored by Interface Builder to correctly display CLLocationButton. (78186685)

• Fixed an issue with apps localized using older localization codes such as English or using a common variant code such as ko_KR that broke CLLocationButton with textual labels. (78268837)

Updates in watchOS 8 beta

App Store

New Features in watchOS 8 beta

• StoreKit 2 introduces a modern Swift-based API that takes advantage of new language features like Swift concurrency. Use this API to load product information, display in-app purchases in your store, allow customers to make purchases, manage access to content and subscriptions, and receive transaction information signed by the App Store in JSON Web Signature (JWS) format. (66587964)

Music

New Features in watchOS 8 beta

• The Radio app has merged into the Music app. (67836373)

Networking

New Features in watchOS 8 beta

• The default Accept-Language header that URLSession sends has an updated format and corrected values for multiple locales. In addition to the preferred language, the header also includes the current system language as a fallback if it differs from the preferred language. This behavior affects apps that link against macOS 12, iOS 15, tvOS 15, and watchOS 8 SDKs. (38772422)

Swift

Known Issues

• The async Task APIs in macOS, watchOS, and tvOS differ from the async Task APIs in iOS. As a result, Task API calls on Actor objects in multi-platform projects may cause async functions to hang at a suspension point. (79378627)

SwiftUI

New Features in watchOS 8 beta

• LocalizedStringKey can now contain Markdown syntax. The system parses Markdown strings when you create a Text view from a LocalizedStringKey, including Text views created with a string literal. The system styles Text according to Markdown constructs. (74515884)

• You can create Text from an AttributedString structure. Text respects the styles you provide through attributes within the SwiftUI attribute scope; these styles take precedence over styles you provide through view modifiers. (74841755)

• Specific kinds of animations now execute off the main thread, so there are new thread-safety requirements. (70524799) Ensure the following functions and types are thread-safe:
  • All methods and accessors of types conforming to these protocols: AlignmentID, Animatable, EnvironmentKey, EnvironmentValues, Equatable, GeometryEffect, Hashable, Identifiable, PreferenceKey, Shape, VectorArithmetic.
  • Any closures you pass to the following types and functions, but only if the views that created them don’t have references to ObservableObject types: ForEach, GeometryReader, backgroundPreferenceValue(_:_:), overlayPreferenceValue(_:_:), transformPreference(_:_:), anchorPreference(key:value:transform:), transformAnchorPreference(key:value:transform:), transformEnvironment(_:transform:), transaction(_:).

• A TextField provided an NSFormatter now updates its binding as the user types. NSFormatter formats the text of the field when the user submits the field, or when focus moves away from the field. (67899823)

Resolved in watchOS 8 Beta

• Fixed an issue that occurred when creating a Color from a UIColor or an NSColor. This process now uses the explicit init(uiColor:) or init(nsColor:) initializers. Give preference to the Color standard-system colors over the equivalent from UIColor or NSColor. For example, use blue over the visually equivalent systemBlue. (73987059)

• Fixed an issue that dispatched a callback for onAppear(perform:) and onDisappear(perform:) when any of the views in a group of multiple views appeared or disappeared. Now, when you apply them to a group of multiple views, onAppear(perform:) and onDisappear(perform:) only dispatch the callback each time the first view appears and the last view disappears. (75609476)

• Fixed an issue with Labeled views that distributed the space equally. Labeled views now prioritize displaying the label fully before the rest of the control when laid out horizontally. (74728764)

• Fixed asset catalog images with the Preserve Vector Representation option set so the images work correctly when resized by re-rendering from their vector source. (49074629)

• Symbol images in Widgets and watchOS complications are now redrawn from their vector outlines, avoiding pixellation. (50464514)
• Updated default styling for CarouselListStyle. (75718595)

TabularData

New Features in watchOS 8 beta

• TabularData is a new Swift framework you use to analyze and manipulate tabular data. You can use DataFrame to read CSV and JSON files, as well as join, group, and aggregate data. (69982458)

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