iOS Release Rhythm - Annual Majors, Point Releases and Support

Apple ships a major iOS release every September, previewed at WWDC in June and tested through a summer of betas. Point releases follow through the year, delivering features that were not ready at launch. In 2025 Apple moved to year-based version numbering, aligning iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS on a single number. This article covers the annual cycle, how long devices keep receiving updates, and how to choose a deployment target.

The annual cycle

Apple’s platform schedule has been stable for over a decade:

The summer beta period is the window for app compatibility work. By the time the release ships in September, adoption is fast - iOS users update far more quickly than users of most other platforms, which is both the advantage and the pressure of the ecosystem.

Year-based version numbers

In 2025 Apple replaced sequential version numbers with year-based ones. iOS 18 was followed by iOS 26 rather than iOS 19, matching the tail of the year in which the release cycle mostly runs. macOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS and visionOS moved to the same number at the same time.

The motivation was coherence: previously, iOS 18, macOS 15 and watchOS 11 shipped together, and nothing in the numbers indicated that. Under the new scheme, a single number identifies a release generation across every platform.

The change is cosmetic from a technical standpoint, but it affects anything that parses version strings, compares numbers, or documents minimum requirements.

Point releases carry real features

Unlike some platforms where point releases are purely corrective, Apple routinely ships significant features in x.1 and x.2. Capabilities announced at WWDC frequently arrive months after the September release.

For developers this means the September version number is not sufficient to describe availability. An API introduced in a point release requires checking at that granularity:

if #available(iOS 26.2, *) {
    useNewCapability()
} else {
    useFallback()
}

Device support windows

Apple supports iPhones with major OS updates for longer than most of the industry - typically five to seven years from release, with security updates sometimes extending further for devices no longer receiving major versions.

Each September some older devices are dropped from the new major version. Those devices usually continue to receive security patches on the previous major for a period, which is why an older iOS version can still be receiving updates after its successor has shipped.

Choosing a deployment target

The trade-off is reach versus available APIs.

• Current major only (iOS 26): access to everything, at the cost of excluding users who have not updated and devices that cannot.
• Current minus one (iOS 25 and later): the common default. Covers effectively the entire active device base within a few months of a release while still allowing recent APIs with availability checks.
• Current minus two or more: rarely justified for consumer apps given Apple’s adoption rates, but sometimes required for enterprise or education deployments with managed update policies.

Xcode itself constrains this: each version supports a range of deployment targets and requires a minimum macOS version to run. In practice the Xcode requirement often drives infrastructure upgrades - build machines need the macOS version that the new Xcode requires, which becomes an annual dependency.

App Store requirements

Apple periodically raises the minimum SDK version required for App Store submissions, typically requiring apps to be built against the SDK from the most recent release within a few months of it shipping. This is a hard deadline for anyone shipping updates, and it is announced in advance on the developer site.

Missing it does not remove an existing app, but it blocks new submissions and updates until the build is made against a newer SDK.

Conclusion

iOS runs on an annual clock: WWDC in June, betas through the summer, release in September, and meaningful features in the point releases that follow. Year-based numbering since 2025 aligns the platforms but changes version parsing. Plan compatibility work for the summer beta window, use availability checks at point-release granularity, and watch the App Store SDK deadlines, which arrive on their own schedule.