iOS 18.4: Four new features coming to your iPhone next month

iOS 18.4 will be released to iPhone users in just a few weeks. If you aren’t running the beta, you might have missed what’s new. Here’s an overview of four new features coming to your iPhone with iOS 18.4 next month…

Priority Notifications

While Apple has indefinitely delayed its “more personalized” version of Siri, there’s one new Apple Intelligence feature in iOS 18.4. The update adds Priority Notifications, a feature that automatically surfaces your most important notifications.

Here’s Apple’s description of the feature:

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.

You can manage Priority Notifications by going to the Settings app, including adding or removing specific apps from being included in priority sorting.

Keep in mind that Apple Intelligence is supported by the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and all iPhone 16 models.

Ambient music

One of the most intriguing features of iOS 18.4 is ambient music. The update adds four new Control Center toggles that can start playing ambient music with a single tap:

Wellbeing
Chill
Productivity
Sleep

These can be added to Control Center, assigned to your iPhone’s Action button, and placed on your Lock Screen. Each is assigned to a default Apple Music playlist, but you can customize it to any playlist in your Music library. Playback is controlled via a pared-down Now Playing interface with play/pause, skip, volume controls, and AirPlay controls.

New emoji

iOS 18.4 beta 2 adds seven new emoji for iPhone users:

Face with bags under eyes
Fingerprint
Leafless tree
Root vegetable
Harp
Shovel
Splatter

Do new emoji matter in the age of Genmoji, which lets you create infinite emoji? We’ll see.

Apple News+ Food

The Apple News app has a brand new “Apple News+ Food” feature with iOS 18.4. The feature aggregates thousands of curated recipes from top publishers. Those recipes are presented in a clear and clutter-free interface with filtering options, integration with the Clock app, and more.

Apple says:

With the new Food feature, users will be able to find stories curated by Apple News editors, as well as browse, search, and filter tens of thousands of recipes in the Recipe Catalog — with new recipes added every day. The beautifully designed recipe format makes it easy to review ingredients and directions, and a new cook mode takes step-by-step instructions to the full screen. Users can also save their favorite recipes for later and access them offline.

Wrap up

There are other new features in iOS 18.4, and you can find full coverage of the update in our dedicated guide.

Apple has confirmed that it will release iOS 18.4 to everyone in April. Are you running the beta? What are your favorite features and changes? Let us know in the comments.