iOS 18.4 is released, adding AI languages, Food in News+, Ambient Music, and more

Macworld

The headline feature of iOS 18 is an expansion of Apple Intelligence, but there are a number of helpful quality-of-life features as well. After getting no major new AI features in iOS 18.3, Apple is bringing Apple Intelligence to many more countries in iOS 18.4 as well as a new device—Vision Pro.

However, the anticipated Siri update has to wait. There are several big Siri updates coming, including personal context, app intents, and screen reading, but they’re missing from iOS 18.4, and Apple is having such trouble making it work well that it’s not coming until next year. Despite missing this important feature—promised at WWDC last fall—there are lots of improvements in iOS 18.4.

The iOS 18.4 beta began on February 21 with a developer beta, and the first public beta on February 24. The wide release came on March 31, just a little before the expected early April release.

Updated March 31: iOS 18.4 is now in wide release. The release notes have been added below.

What’s new in iOS 18.4

We’ll update this section with the features and changes found in the latest iOS 18.4 beta, as they are found.

Apple Intelligence languages: Including Simplified Chinese, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish—along with localized English for Singapore and India.

Apple Intelligence regions: With iOS 18.4, iPhone and iPad users in the EU will gain access to Apple Intelligence features for the first time.

Siri in Control Center: There are new Control Center options for Type to Siri and Talk to Siri.

Visual Intelligence: You can now invoke Visual Intelligence on the Action button or from Control Center, and Visual Intelligence is available on iPhone 15 Pro.

Prioritize Notifications: Apple Intelligence will attempt to show notifications that may be important in a separate section on the lock screen. Go to Settings > Notifications > Prioritize Notifications to enable.

New Emoji: There are seven new emoji in this release—Face with bags under eyes, Fingerprint, Harp, Leafless tree, Root vegetable, Shovel, Splatter.

Image Playground sketch style: The third image style for Image Playground, sketch, is finally here. It was demonstrated back at WWDC last summer but never made it into a prior iOS 18 release.

Food in News+: A new section in Apple News+ for curated recipes, restaurant reviews, and curated stories about food and dining.

Ambient Music: You can add four different ambient music categories to Control Center: Sleep, Chill, Productivity, and Wellbeing.

CarPlay third icon row: The two-row limit for app icons on CarPlay displays has been expanded to three rows.

Apple Vision Pro app: iOS 18.4 brings a new iPhone app that offers users a new way to download Vision Pro apps and games from the App Store on your iPhone, as well as browse Apple TV content and access your library of spatial photos and videos. It only shows up if you have a Vision Pro associated with the same Apple ID.

Mail categories in iPadOS: With the iPadOS 18.4 release, the iPad version of the Mail app finally gets the categories that have been on the iPhone since iOS 18.2.

Default translation app: In the Default Apps section of Settings, there is now an option to set a default translation app.

iOS 18.4 Release Notes

Here are Apple’s release notes for iOS 18.4:

Apple Intelligence (All iPhone 16 models, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max)

Priority notifications appear at the top of your notifications, highlighting important notifications that may require your immediate attention

Sketch is now available as an additional style option in Image Playground, allowing you to create gorgeous sketch drawings

Apple Intelligence features support 8 additional languages and 2 additional English locales, including English (India, Singapore), French (France, Canada), German (Germany), Italian (Italy), Japanese (Japan), Korean (South Korea), Portuguese (Brazil), Simplified Chinese, and Spanish (Spain, Latin America, US)

Apple Vision Pro App

The new Apple Vision Pro app, automatically installed for users with Apple Vision Pro, helps you discover new content, spatial experiences, and quickly access information about your device

Apple News+

Recipes from some of the world’s best recipe publishers are now available on Apple News+

Recipe Catalog allows you to browse or search to find the perfect dish and save it to your Saved Recipes

Cooking mode lets you easily follow step-by-step directions

The Food section also includes stories about restaurants, kitchen tips, healthy eating, and more

Photos

New filters to show or hide items that are not contained in an album, or synced from a Mac or PC, in the Library view in Photos

Reorder items in the Media Types and Utilities collections in Photos

Consistent filtering options in all collections, including the ability to sort by oldest or newest first in Photos

Option to sort albums by Date Modified in Photos

Ability to disable “Recently Viewed” and “Recently Shared” collections in Photos Settings

Hidden photos are no longer included for import to Mac or a PC if Use Face ID is enabled in Photos settings

This update also includes the following enhancements and bug fixes:

Safari recent search suggestions help you quickly get back to previous search topics when starting a new query

Setup Assistant streamlines steps parents need to take to create a Child Account for a kid in their family, and enables child-appropriate default settings if parents prefer to complete setting up a Child Account later

Screen Time App Limits persist even after a child uninstalls and reinstalls an app

App Store includes summaries for user reviews so you can get helpful insights from other users at a glance

Pause and resume of an app download or update on App Store without losing progress

New widgets for Podcasts including a Followed Shows widget to track your favorite shows and a Library widget to get to your most used sections, such as Latest Episodes, Saved, and Downloaded

Ambient Music offers the ability to instantly play music from Control Center, giving access to a set of hand-curated playlists that offer soundtracks for daily life

Apple Fitness+ Collections can now be added to Library

Matter-compatible robot vacuum cleaners can be controlled in the Home app as well as be added to scenes and automations

Support for 10 new system languages including Bangla, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu

iOS 18.4: Security updates

Apple’s security releases support page lists dozens of security fixes. There are a stunning 59 updates listed, which is more than we can recall seeing in any single release. Of course, that doesn’t make them more important, the severity of security vulnerabilities is not necessarily related to their number. But these fixes involve everything from under-the-hood core libraries and frameworks, kernel patches, all the way to common apps used every day like Calendar and Photos.

iOS 18.4: How to install

To get the latest version of iOS 18 on your phone, head over to the Settings app, then General and Software Update. Then follow the prompts to restart and install the update. If you don’t want to wait until the official update arrives, you can install the most recent release candidate, which will be identical to the public release, by turning on Beta Updates in the Software Update tab.

Find out everything you need to know about iOS 18 in our iOS 18 superguide.