Apple revealed the iOS 18.4 release date — what’s new

The company Apple officially revealed the release of iOS 18.4 in April. The first beta version is already available for developers and public beta testers. Although some previously expected features of Apple Intelligence for Siri are not among the innovations, the update still includes other notable changes.

MacRumors writes about it.

What are the most important innovations in iOS 18.4?

Priority notifications

One of the main features of Apple Intelligence in this release is the ability to automatically identify and display the most important notifications directly on the lock screen. Users can enable this option in the settings: "Settings" — "Notifications" — "Prioritise Notifications".

Priority Notifications are available on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and all iPhone 16 models.

Apple News+ Food

The Apple News application will have a new Food section, which will provide Apple News+ subscribers with a huge library of recipes and a variety of cooking content.

According to Apple, users will be able to:

• read specially selected food stories by Apple News editors;
• browse and search for tens of thousands of recipes in the Recipe Catalogue;
• use a convenient format for viewing recipes with a step-by-step cooking mode in full screen;
• save your favorite recipes for offline viewing.

Ambient Music

The Ambient Music feature will appear in the Control Centre. It allows you to instantly switch on a selection of tracks from four categories — Sleep, Chill, Productivity, and Wellbeing.

Extended support for Apple Intelligence

Apple Intelligence will support new languages, including:

• French
• German
• Italian
• Brazilian Portuguese;
• Spanish
• Japanese;
• Korean;
• Chinese (simplified);
• English (Singapore);
• English (India).

The Image Playground feature will add the new style called Sketch (in addition to Animation and Illustration), which allows you to create images based on text descriptions. CarPlay in some cars with large displays will be able to display an additional row of application icons on one screen.

In the EU countries, it will be possible to set the default map application, including Google Maps.

New emojis

The update is expected to include new emojis that comply with the Unicode 16 standard.

The company traditionally adds a fresh set of icons to its "x.4" releases, and iOS 18.4 will be no exception. According to early Unicode announcements, the new emojis may include a "face with bags under the eyes", "fingerprint", "tree without leaves", "root vegetable", "harp", "shovel", "stain", etc.

As a reminder, most smartphone brands are criticized from time to time, but Apple is often in the spotlight for lacking certain features that have long been available in the Android sector. Users do not like the delay in the introduction of these features.

We also wrote that transferring data between new iPhones and iPads can seem like a daunting task. Nevertheless, there are many simple ways to help you transfer all your important information and set up your new gadget almost instantly.