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

Apple today seeded the second betas of upcoming iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 updates to developers for testing purposes, with the software coming two weeks after Apple released the first betas.

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.

A future update is set to bring a dedicated Vision Pro app that will accompany the headset, allowing users to find and download content, manage the headset, control guest experiences, and more.

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.