iOS 18.4’s notification upgrade is easily one of Apple’s best AI features

Apple Intelligence was first introduced at WWDC nine months ago, and has rolled out progressively over time. Now, one of the last of those initial AI features—Priority Notifications—is arriving in iOS 18.4, and it’s easily among Apple’s best yet.

One of iOS 18’s last remaining AI features is a winner

There are a ton of different features that fall under the umbrella of ‘Apple Intelligence.’

For example, there are AI image creation features, writing tools, camera powers like visual intelligence, Photos app upgrades, Siri changes, and a lot more.

Two features I’ve personally found most useful are:

ChatGPT makes the recent Siri delays a little easier to swallow, and notification summaries have a big impact on one of the iPhone’s core features.

Even though notification summaries have stirred some controversy, I still believe they’re among the best, most impactful AI features to date.

iOS 18.4’s new notification feature is just as compelling—for many of the same reasons.

Priority Notifications is a new capability coming to your iPhone with iOS 18.4. It does something pretty simple, but powerful.

How Priority Notifications work in iOS 18.4

Here’s how Apple describes Priority Notifications:

Apple Intelligence can show you notifications that may be important in a separate section on the Lock Screen, so you can catch up on what you may have missed. You can still swipe up to view all notifications.

Essentially, your iPhone uses on-device processing to analyze how important each notification appears to be.

If a notification seems important, it’s surfaced more prominently on your Lock Screen in a new Priority Notifications section.

All your other notifications? They’re still present, but underneath the ones that AI deems important.

By visiting Settings ⇾ Notifications ⇾ Prioritize Notifications, you can choose whether this feature is turned on or not. But you can also manually disable it for certain apps.

This manual option is a nice touch, since it means you don’t have to rely entirely on Apple Intelligence to determine what’s important to you. You can make that choice for yourself.

Many of us get far too many notifications, but don’t want to deal with the hassle of disabling them for certain apps. Or in some cases, we want certain notifications from apps, but only the important ones.

Now in iOS 18.4, Apple Intelligence can help ensure you won’t miss out on what matters most.

Are you interested in using Priority Notifications in iOS 18.4? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments.

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