Apple has finally released iOS 26.4, which features at least 13 “enhancements” for your iPhone. The latest version of iOS comes with eight new emojis, updates to Apple Music, new accessibility options and more.
There are several improvements or changes that are largely focused on Apple Music and Accessibility. Here’s what’s new and how they work.
Eight new emojis
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With iOS 26.4, you’re getting eight new emojis.
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- Ballet Dancers
- Distorted Face
- Fight Cloud
- Hairy Creature (Bigfoot basically)
- Landslide
- Orca
- Trombone
- Treasure Chest
Beyond the new designs, there are new skin tone options for the People Wrestling and People With Bunny Ears emojis. In all that gives you 163 new emoji designs between the new emojis and the updated skin tones.
Personally, Bigfoot will see alot of use but the distorted or “inflatable” face will likely prove popular. Meanwhile, Unicode has lowered the number of new emojis in the last few years. Since iOS 16.4, which featured 30 new characters, iOS 17 and 18 both received less than 10 new emojis.
Apple Music
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A new feature called Playlist Playground (still in beta) is an AI playlist generator that creates playlists based on your descriptions. The playlist will come with a title, description and track list.
Speaking of playlists, a new Ambient Music widget lets you add curated playlists to your iPhone’s homescreen for sleep, productivity, wellbeing or sleep.
Concerts finds shows from artists in your library and also recommends new musicians based on your listening habits.
In the control center, Offline Music Recognize identifies songs even when you don’t have an internet connection and delivers results when you have a connection again.
Finally, new full-screen backgrounds are designed to give albums and playlists a more “immersive” look.
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Apple Podcasts now with video
(Image credit: Apple)
Video podcasts have proven popular with platforms hosts lately. Spotify and Netflix teamed up to bring videocasts to the platform. YouTube is filled with video podcasts, and now Apple is getting in on the pivot to video.
Apple Podcasts now supports video podcasts including episodes from Las Culturistas, Pablo Torre Finds Out and Giggly Squad. If a podcast you’re subscribed to has a video option, you can turn the video on or off as you listen within the media player. You can also switch it to be horizontal for full-screen viewing if you want.
Accessibility options
(Image credit: Nicholas Sutrich / Android Central)
Apple added a trio of accessibility options in iOS 26.4 that should help with viewability when using your iPhone.
- One lets you reduce bright effects to minimize flashes when you tap on elements like buttons.
- When you’re viewing media, there are new subtitle and caption settings under the captions icon to enable you customize and preview subtitles.
- The Reduce Motion setting “more reliably” reduces Liquid Glass animations for those who are sensitive to screen motion
Apple News and Apple TV
Both Apple News and the Apple TV app got small updates that improve recommendations and some functionality.
Apple TV has a new Genius Browse feature that recommends movies and shows based on what you’ve loved or watched in the past. It starts with some collections or you can find related titles from shows or movies you’re already watching.
As for Apple News, it has new updates for food, local news and F1 racing. Recipes in the Food feed now have unit conversions, nutritional information and ratings. The new features are only available in Apple News+.
Local news has been expanded to the entire U.S., and F1 watchers can follow drivers or teams to get breaking news.
Smaller, but important iOS 26.4 improvements
(Image credit: Future)
There are seven more improvements like improved keyboard accuracy that will improve how you use your iPhone.
Here’s what else iOS 26.4 brings to the table:
- Freeform joins Apple Creator Studio with “advanced image creation and editing tools”, plus a premium content library
- Mark reminders as urgent from Quick Toolbar, and filter for reminders in Smart Lists
- Purchase Sharing lets adult members in Family Sharing use their own payment methods
- Improved keyboard accuracy when typing quickly
- Hold Assist: Lets you know when a live agent joins the call
- 17 languages are now supported by Live Translation in Messages
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