Testing software updates with the AppleSeed for IT beta programme
AppleSeed for IT is a programme specifically designed for enterprise and education customers committed to testing each new version of Apple beta software in their organisations. This programme provides IT professionals and technology managers with an opportunity to evaluate the latest pre-release software versions in their unique work environments, offer feedback directly to Apple engineering teams through a dedicated feedback submission process, and participate in detailed testing plans and forum discussions with other participants.
iOS 17.5, iPadOS 17.5, macOS 14.5, or later, make it easier than ever to manage beta programme participation in an organisation. Users can receive offers to enrol in beta programmes even without an Apple Account in Settings or System Settings. Device management services can also automatically enrol devices during Setup Assistant when using Automated Device Enrolment, or remotely at a later time if the device is supervised and uses iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15 or later. If necessary, a device management service has the option to remove a supervised device from beta programmes and restrict a user from manually enrolling. This removes the need for the user to perform manual steps and allows for a streamlined process throughout the beta testing life cycle.
To offer AppleSeed for IT beta versions without the need for an Apple Account, a user with the role of administrator in Apple School Manager or Apple Business Manager needs to sign in to the AppleSeed for IT portal and accept the terms and conditions on behalf of their organisation for the current beta period.
Although beta enrolment can be managed without the need for an Apple Account, organisations may want to consider providing participating users with a Managed Apple Account so they can submit feedback directly to Apple. This also ensures submitted feedback is tied to their organisation. If users select to submit their feedback for the team rather than as personal feedback, other users like the IT team can engage in submitted tickets and stay informed. For more information on team feedback, see Manage team feedback in Feedback Assistant on Mac in the Feedback Assistant User Guide.
Similar to software updates and upgrades, beta releases provided by those programmes can be deferred on supervised devices, and a declarative status report provides increased visibility and allows organisations to track beta program enrolments on managed devices.
Using the available configuration options, an organisation can remotely enrol different devices into different beta programmes and — combined with the option to defer beta and production releases — can be used to implement a phased testing and rollout approach starting straight from the first beta release.
Note: The beta configuration and status report isn’t supported on devices using User Enrolment.
Enrolling a device in a beta programme
To enrol a device in the Apple Beta Software Programme or AppleSeed for IT, a device management service needs to retrieve a token from Apple and provide it to devices during Automated Device Enrolment or using the com.apple.configuration.softwareupdate.settings declaration.
The first step is for a user with the role of administrator in Apple School Manager or Apple Business Manager to enrol at https://beta.apple.com/for-it. After enrolment, a device management service can request available beta programme tokens using the https://mdmenrollment.apple.com/os-beta-enrollment/tokens endpoint. Similar to other service endpoints available at mdmenrollment.apple.com, device management services need to authenticate using OAuth.
The HTTP GET request needs to include the following header fields (all required):
HTTP header field | Description | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The OAuth token to authenticate the request. For more information about the authentication process, see Authenticating with a Device Enrolment Program (DEP) Server on the Apple Developer website. | ||||||||||
| Needs to be set to value: 1 | ||||||||||
The service endpoint returns a JSON object with the following structure:
{ "betaEnrollmentTokens": [ { "token": "p3ySHD3CiWtpsH1DKS8sVdv9BgmFbRDh31xJH2584wJ5AngrYoReFB4MVY53rucW", "title": "macOS AppleSeed Beta", "os": "macOS" }, { "token": "35b68K477rAsry6dxiDJBnE7AvjRTueUXFa9jZ3ZhQSFpJZ3Jxz9M8mCt9UXK4Sg", "title": "iOS 18 AppleSeed Beta", "os": "iOS" } ]}To enrol a device into a beta programme, the RequireBetaProgram dictionary needs to contain the keys shown below (all required strings).
Key | Description | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A human-readable description of the beta programme. | ||||||||||
| The seeding service token for the organisation that the device management service is part of. Use this token to enrol the device in the corresponding beta programme. | ||||||||||
The following is an example response making use of the described keys:
{ "code": "com.apple.softwareupdate.required", "description": "AppleSeed enrollment required", "message": "This device needs to be enrolled into the AppleSeed Beta program", "details": { "OSVersion": "18.2", "RequireBetaProgram": { "code": "iOS 18 AppleSeed Beta", "token": "35b68K477rAsry6dxiDJBnE7AvjRTueUXFa9jZ3ZhQSFpJZ3Jxz9M8mCt9UXK4Sg"," } }}The token is unique for each organisation and can’t be reused across different Apple School Manager and Apple Business Manager organisations. The token is also specific to a certain operating system upgrade seeding period. The title is a human-readable description of the beta release and os can contain the following values: iOS (includes iPadOS), macOS, tvOS, watchOS or visionOS.
After enrolling an iPhone or iPad in device management, a device management service can enrol or unenrol supervised iPhone or iPad devices from beta programmes using the Beta dictionary in the com.apple.configuration.softwareupdate.settings declaration.
