Apple Seeds Fourth iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 Betas With Priority Notifications, Ambient Music and More

Apple today seeded the fourth betas of upcoming iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 updates to developers for testing purposes, with the software coming a week after Apple released the third betas.

Generic iOS 18
iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 can be downloaded from the Settings app on a compatible device by going to General > Software Update.

With iOS 18.4, Apple is adding the Priority Notifications Apple Intelligence feature, which is designed to determine which of your notifications are the most important, highlighting them in an easy-to-see dedicated section on the Lock Screen.

The update includes a new Apple News+ Food section for ‌Apple News‌+ subscribers, plus it adds the Sketch style to Image Playground so you can generate images that look hand drawn. ‌Apple Intelligence‌ is also available in more languages, including French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese (simplified), along with localized English for Singapore and India.

There are new emoji characters, and a dedicated Vision Pro app that allows Vision Pro owners to find and download content, manage the headset, control guest experiences, and more, right from the iPhone.

Mail Categorization has expanded to the iPad, and there's a new Ambient Music feature for playing relaxing music from Control Center. There are a number of other smaller features too, with details available in our iOS 18.4 features guide.

Apple plans to release iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 in early April.

Related Forums: iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS Sequoia

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Top Rated Comments

bperrella Avatar
12 months ago
Man I hope they fixed the bug where iCloud email isn’t pushing in the Mail app
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
tywebb13 Avatar
12 months ago
build number for both is 22E5232a

builds of other betas released today are

macOS Sequoia 15.4 beta 4 (24E5238a)
macOS Sonoma 14.7.5 RC 4 (23H525)
macOS Ventura 13.7.5 RC 4 (22H525) (1 day later)
tvOS 18.4 beta 4 (22L5250a)
audioOS 18.4 beta 4 (22L5250a)
visionOS 2.4 beta 4 (22O5231a)
watchOS 11.4 beta 4 (22T5244a)
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
bluespider Avatar
12 months ago
Wow, wasn’t expecting an a release today.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
whelmedjedi Avatar
12 months ago
Why are you writing same features again and again in every update? Those features were already launched with previous 18.4 beta updates. So nothing new on this update rather than bug fixes.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
bperrella Avatar
12 months ago

Anyone DL'd this beta yet and tried this? Mail push not working is annoying me. :confused:
Seems to be working for me on DB4!
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
terryvision Avatar
12 months ago

Man I hope they fixed the bug where iCloud email isn’t pushing in the Mail app
Anyone DL'd this beta yet and tried this? Mail push not working is annoying me. :confused:
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)