Apple Releases iOS 18.5, macOS 15.5, and Other x.5 OS Updates

Article Comments
1

Originally published at: Apple Releases iOS 18.5, macOS 15.5, and Other x.5 OS Updates - TidBITS

Apple has unveiled updates to its operating systems, primarily for security fixes, though some also include enhancements and bug fixes. Most notably, parents will now receive a notification in iOS 18.5, iPadOS 18.5, and macOS 15.5 when a Screen Time passcode is used on a child’s device. Otherwise, here’s what you will find:

  • iOS 18.5 and iPadOS 18.5: These operating systems receive a new Pride Harmony wallpaper, enable Buy with iPhone/iPad when purchasing content within the Apple TV app on a third-party device, fix a bug that caused the Apple Vision Pro app to display a black screen, and add support for carrier-provided satellite features on all models of the iPhone 13. iOS 18.5 also addresses a bug that prevented photo locations from showing when you enabled Require Face ID for the Photos app. Unfortunately, our testing indicates that iOS 18.5 does not resolve the problem introduced in iOS 18.4 that made the iPhone’s StandBy feature less responsive to motion that would have previously displayed the clock. The releases address 31 security vulnerabilities, including one in Apple’s new C1 modem chip in the iPhone 16e.
  • macOS 15.5 Sequoia: The Screen Time notification is the only consumer-level change to Sequoia that Apple mentions. However, the macOS 15.5 enterprise release notes say that macOS 15.5 now supports the DHCPv6 Fully Qualified Domain Name option, no longer incorrectly skips the Location Services pane during MDM user creation outside of Setup Assistant, resolves a problem that caused Macs updating from 15.4 with Platform SSO configured to start up in macOS Recovery until FileVault was disabled, eliminates repeated alerts about a screen-sharing application accessing your screen, provides attestation of Platform SSO keys, and deprecates the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) client, which will be removed in a future version of macOS. macOS 15.5 addresses 46 security vulnerabilities.
  • watchOS 11.5: Along with a new Pride Harmony watch face, watchOS 11.5 supports Buy with Apple Watch for purchasing content within the Apple TV app on a third-party device and fixes a bug that prevented the iPhone from displaying a notification when the watch battery is fully charged. One of the 21 security vulnerabilities addressed in watchOS 11.5 is the zero-day vulnerability Apple patched in other updates last month (see “Apple’s x.4.1 OS Updates Patch Exploited Security Vulnerabilities,” 17 April 2025).
  • visionOS 2.5: The only change that Apple highlights for visionOS 2.5 is the addition of a new Vision tab in the Apple TV app designed to showcase Apple Immersive Video and 3D movies. It addresses 23 security vulnerabilities.
  • tvOS 18.5: Release notes for tvOS 18.5 aren’t available yet, but we’re betting on “performance and stability improvements.” And, of course, 22 security vulnerabilities.
  • HomePod Software 18.5: As you might expect, “performance and stability improvements” is all that HomePods receive.

As is always the case when security fixes are involved, Apple also released minor updates to iPadOS 17.7 (29 vulnerabilities), macOS 14.7.6 Sonoma (31 vulnerabilities), and macOS 13.7.6 Ventura (29 vulnerabilities).

We can’t see any urgency in installing these updates, so do it in a week or so when it’s convenient.

3 Likes
2

Did a clean installation of macOS 15.5 earlier today on both of my Macs, and all seems fine. Had a SuperDuper! backup done on Saturday for both machines, and used that for migration. Not really seeing much change, but given that 46 security issues were addressed, that alone is a good reason for the installation.

2 Likes
3

Macrumours has an update on tvOS 18.5:

There is another article about remote control of iPhone camera without an Apple Watch. The trick is to use voice control and, bizarrely, say “Turn up the volume,”!

4

And Apple’s tvOS release note now says that, too.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/106336

5

Weird, but it probably works because pressing the volume up button while using the camera takes a photo, as if it was a shutter button. I can’t remember but volume down may be the same, but I’ve always used volume up.

6

Now they’re just bugging me—I wish Apple would update its pages in a timely fashion for those of us covering the releases.

2 Likes
7

To add insult to injury, their macOS release notes apparently don’t contain all the changes. As Howard Oakley points out, you need to combine their release notes with the enterprise notes to get an accurate picture of what was touched through an update. Note, this is for the regular vanilla consumer release version of the update, not just dev releases or some kind of enterprise software.

8

Thanks for reminding me of those separate notes, @Simon. I have been tracking the macOS enterprise release notes, but I’ve now made pinned tabs in Arc for:

The iOS and iPadOS enterprise release notes are quite interesting—some of the listed items sound like they’d be of interest to anyone:

iOS and iPadOS 18.5

  • Shared iPads now have screen recording available in Control Center. (iPadOS only)
  • Emails sent over poor or no network connection will no longer be purged from the device.
  • Fixed an issue where enabling Apple Intelligence could cause threads in Mail to only show the most recent message.
  • Resolved an issue where some supported paper sizes were not displaying as options for printing.
  • Enterprise apps will no longer fail to launch.
  • The wallpaper MDM command no longer hangs and will not disrupt further communication with affected devices.
1 Like
9

I installed macOS 15.5 today. Apple did not turn on Apple Intelligence, but it did change my settings for future updates by selecting both Download new updates when available and Install macOS updates. It also enabled storing my desktop and documents on iCloud, contrary to the previous settings.

10

Apple released Safari 18.5 for Ventura and Sonoma a day or so after the rest of these updates. I almost wrote that it was probably coming out, but decided I’d look silly if it didn’t. Instead, I get to look slightly silly for not covering it, but it’s so minor that this is all the enthusiasm I can muster.

1 Like
11

When I installed 15.5 my MacPro7,1 became so unstable as to be unusable. After a day or two of crashes and kernel panics, reinstalling macOS in online Recovery mode let it recover. Mostly. The crashes and panics stopped, but I discovered my Promise Pegasus R4i RAID had become read-only. The R4i system consists of four spinning HFS±formatted HDs in a hardware controlled RAID5, which mounts as SAS storage. Checking the Promise web site I found the R4i hardware controller firmware and the Promise utility software that creates a user interface for the controller both had had updates available a long time. During the time updates were available I believe I had checked the Promise software and been reassured “You have the most current version.” It seems the Promise notification system had not worked. I updated the R4i controller firmware and Promise software to current versions. My R4i remained read-only. I discussed the problem extensively with Level 2 Promise tech support. They couldn’t replicate my issue, but are still searching for a solution. The issue seems to be that on startup macOS cannot validate the R4i and so mounts it as read-only, recommending I copy all data off and reformat the disk. Meanwhile, I turned on an external USB drive which has two (HFS+) disks. Both of those fail to mount, with the same error message as the R4i. An Apple software RAID of four SSDs on a PCIe card continues to mount and run with no problem. This last system had not reliably mounted for years, until bug fixes from Apple and OWC were released in macOS 15.1.

Howard Oakley reports many changes in bundled applications, and more changes in library components. In Apple Discussions many report ongoing issues with external USB drives failing to mount reliably. A software update will fix the problem, then in the next update the problem returns. The problems for me described here, which began on updating to macOS 15.5, seem to fit this pattern.

I suspect the overall source of these issues is Apple’s trying to merge iOS and macOS, while debugging the neglected macOS, and keeping Intel macOS in the picture.

12

Let’s not get into anything about how Apple is “merging” macOS and iOS, which Apple has repeatedly and vociferously denied.

13

Thank you for pointing out Apple’s stated intention. I am relieved to hear it.

Trying to understand my problems described above led me to Apple’s recently updated statement on security, which can be downloaded as a 300 page pdf.
Apple Platform Security
Reading, or more accurately glancing over it leads me to believe I will not find a simple solution to security issues. Only Apple approved procedures will be able to thread this maze. As Apple probably intends.

My guess is that ongoing addition of such security measures is one function of the many changes noted by Howard Oakley, as well as those mentioned by Apple. Such complex heightened security measures add many potential points for failure, where legitimate uses such as mine accidentally become blocked. I hope Apple figures this out soon.

14

FWIW, this didn’t happen for me (Mac mini m4). It asked me (yet again) if I wanted to enable Apple Intelligence. I clicked the “Later” button, since there is no “no” button. I assume this means it will ask me again at the next update.

My iCloud and auto-download settings seem to have been left unchanged.

I wonder why changes like this affect some people and not others. The only thing I can think of is that the installer detected a problem in a configuration file and replaced that file with a factory-default.

I noticed that (as has been the case with every update), a new /Users/Shared/Relocated Items folder was created, but (unlike in the past when I was on an Intel Mac), it did not create a shortcut to it on my desktop - I had to explicitly look for it.

The relocated items folder contained system-default configuration files for the Apache2 web server and SSH. It looks like the installer did not alter the working files, but provided the (new? updated?) defaults so I can compare the two and apply any changes that might be appropriate.

After comparing them:

  • The changes to Apache2 (enable user-directories and the Apache manual) are my configurations, which I’ve kept.

  • The changes to SSH look like Apple reconfigured the default configuration files at some point (I assume the working ones were migrated from my old computer).

    • Most of the configuration files were functionally equivalent, but with Apple-specific content moved into separate files, distinct from the BSD-default configuration. I updated my configuration to match the defaults.

    • The /etc/ssh/moduli file has changed. Looking at the file-version number at the top, it changed from 1.35 (dated October 25, 2023) to version 1.38 (dated August 21, 2024) - clearly, Apple integrated a newer version of OpenSSH.

      I accepted the new file, but made a backup copy of the old one, just in case it should matter.

15

It asked me, too; I didn’t mention it because I was reporting that Apple had not enabled it silently (as I thought someone else had reported).

I also had no shortcut on the the desktop, but it was where you mentioned. Everything was in '/Users/Shared/Relocated Items/Configuration/private/etc/ssh.system_default'. That’s not surprising; I seem to have a simpler system than you.

16

This (I assume) means that your SSH configuration doesn’t match the current system-default. If you never made any changes (as I didn’t), then I assume it’s because your configuration was migrated forward from an older macOS installation (possibly an older computer).

I suspect (and will find out after the next update) that if you change your current configuration to match this new system-default (as I just did), that a future upgrade will see that your current installation matches the expected installation and you won’t get another relocated item.

I host a small web server (only accessible from my home LAN). macOS includes the Apache2 server but doesn’t include any system settings panel to enable or configure it. (They did many years ago, via a “Personal Web Sharing” checkbox in the Sharing preference panel.) So you need to hand-edit the configuration files in /etc/apache2 and then start the server by typing apachectl start. The act of starting it will add a launch daemon object to automatically restart it when the system reboots.

I should probably write an article about how to do this, because it’s actually pretty easy.

17

I never made any changes (that I recall; I’m just not that tech savvy), and I also didn’t migrate from an older macOS installation. I bought this computer new (and this was the first OS update). All I copied from the old Mac were documents from my home directory, and I did that without Migration Assistant.

You make it sound easy, but why would you have a web server that is only available on your Local Area Network? I think the answer is Yes, but would this be available to you when you are out of town if you had Tailscale configured and running?

18

Strange. There shouldn’t be any relocated items folder if the running system files are identical to the contents of that folder. But it probably doesn’t matter too much.

I have several computers at home, and there are some files I want to be able to access from anywhere. I put those files in my ~/Sites directory, which exposes it to the LAN with a URL of the form http://hostname/~username/filename, which I can stick in any web browser on any computer (macOS, Windows, Linux or anything else) to read the file.

I don’t export a lot of files that way, but the ones I do are useful, including:

  • An HTML file with my most frequently-used bookmarks. I actually set up most of my computers to use this URL as the home page, so I always have easy access, from any browser on any operating system.
  • When I work on my various databases, I print reports to PDF files, and make them available here as well.
  • Back when my ISP had free web storage, I also used it as a staging area for site changes before uploading them. If I ever decide to buy web hosting, I’ll resume that practice.

I could probably accomplish the same thing using file sharing or cloud storage, but there are a whole bunch of ugly OS-dependency issues that come into play with that approach. And things always seem to glitch in the most annoying ways when I use those protocols.

I actually have a second web server in the house on a Linux PC, which serves a similar purpose, but mostly holds public documents that I find useful for work (e.g. standards-body documents) that I may need to access from a variety of locations and don’t want to rely on the public URL always being valid.

That second server also runs an Apache Tomcat J2EE server. It runs a locally-installed copy of the PlantUML UML editing/rendering software. I use this because my employer doesn’t permit company data to pass through third-party web servers, so I can’t use the public server for work, but I can use a locally-installed copy of the same software, since the data never leaves my computer.

And you’re right, I can’t access any of this when I’m away from home. I’m OK with that, because I rarely require access when I’m away. If there is something I think I’m going to need when traveling, I create an encrypted disk image on my laptop and copy the files there, then transfer everything back when I return home. Again, I could probably also use cloud storage (I have iCloud, Google and OneDrive available), but they never seem to work exactly the way I would like.

1 Like
19

Here are two more changes that I have noticed since installing macOS 15.5.

If I change the contrast slider at System Settings > Accessibility > Display > Display Contrast, nothing happens until the Mac goes to sleep and gets awakened. That strikes me as really strange. (As an aside, anything other than the Normal setting strikes me as painfully garish, and I was really surprised when I woke my Mac and saw the result of the just-barely-increased contrast setting.)

Mail > Settings > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviors > Erase deleted messages and Erase junk messages were both changed to Never, for all accounts.

1 Like
20

Finally I had time to upgrade my iPad (air 4), iPhone (mini 12), Watch (series 6) and Mac mini (2018) to the latest OS versions. I was still running the last major version on all of them.
Upgrading my iPad and Mac mini went without any issues. On my iPhone I first got a message there was not enough room to download the update (I had 21 GB free, the update was a bit over 4 GB, so that was strange). Rebooting the phone solved that issue and everything went fine from there.
Then the problems started. I was forced to upgrade my Watch to 11.5 right after the upgrade of my phone had finished, no option to do it at night. The download took over an hour, preparing took over 30 minutes. During the prepare the battery of my Watch dropped below 20% so I decided to turn on Low Power mode, hoping it would not affect the upgrade. When the prepare was done I decided to perform the upgrade immediately because the battery had dropped to about 15%. So I put the Watch and iPhone on their chargers and waited. The Watch charged quite quickly so the upgrade started after about 15 minutes, finishing about another 15 minutes later. All in all, upgrading the Watch took over 2 hours during which I did not dare to do anything with my Watch and phone to avoid anything going wrong with the upgrade.
After the Watch upgrade I discovered Apple had, again, messed up some things I use a lot:

  • the Remote app no longer sees iTunes or Music on a Mac so I can no longer control the music I stream from any Mac mini in my house; this is a function I used several times a day, very unhappy about this
  • swiping between Watch faces no longer directly changes just the face but often opens an app, apparently associated with a complication on the face; sometimes swiping does directly go to the other face; I have not discovered when a swipe opens an app and when it just changes the face, and I have not found a setting that can turn off opening an app while swiping

There are worse things in life of course, but (again) I am unhappy with a Watch upgrade because Apple changed and removed things that were working perfectly fine and they should not have messed with.