iOS 18.4 has arrived: Here are more than a dozen reasons to upgrade now

iOS 18.4 software update screen on an iPhone 16 Plus

If there’s a marquee feature for iOS 18.4, it’s the expansion of Apple Intelligence into the EU, along with Vision Pro compatibility and new language support for French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. That’s tens of millions of iPhone 16 owners who can finally use the feature Apple says the new iPhones were “built for.” (However, we should point out that this release does not enable Phone Mirroring on Macs in the EU due to issues over Digital Markets Act compliance.)

For everyone else, there isn’t one standout feature. Rather, iOS 18.4 brings lots of little tweaks, improvements, and changes. Maybe one will stand out for you as the thing you’ve been waiting for, or maybe the sum of them taken together just makes your iPhone a little more pleasant to use. Here’s a by-no-means-complete list of the little things you may come to appreciate about this update.

iOS 18.4: 15 minor improvements that make a major impact

Visual Intelligence can be triggered in the Control Center or the Action Button. This makes it available on the iPhone 15 Pro, and it means you can add the control to your lock screen.

If you’ve got AirPods Max, you’re getting an upgrade (with a firmware update as well, probably) to allow audio over USB-C, which will include 24-bit, 48 kHz lossless audio and ultra-low-latency audio.

If you’re a CarPlay user, you’ll appreciate the new third row of app icons on the home screen (if your display size is large enough) and a new API for sporting events will allow for custom experiences during live sporting broadcasts.

Speaking of driving, Apple Maps will now include the location of NACS chargers (that’s the so-called “Tesla connector” appearing on many new EVs).

Got a Vision Pro? Along with support for Apple Intelligence on the headset, there’s a new Vision Pro iPhone app that lets you discover spatial experiences, download apps and games, and get tips.

If you’re a fan of making Shortcuts, you’ll love that there are now lots of Shortcut options to change app settings. So you can make apps behave differently based on location or time of day or whatever, if you’re good at making Shortcuts.

You’ll notice that Safari now shows recent searches when you select the search/address bar, making it easy to repeat that search you just did earlier today. You can clear this at will, or prevent it from showing at all by going to Settings > Safari > Show recent searches.

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There are several tweaks to Control Center. Buttons that have more options when you select them show chevrons, the cellular data toggle shows real signal strength, and so on.

There are new controls, too, including four options for Ambient Music: Sleep, Chill, Productivity, and Wellbeing. Each one has multiple playlist options or you can select one of your playlists. Because they’re Control Center controls, you can add them to the lock screen or trigger them with the Action Button, too.

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There’s an all-new Apple Intelligence feature: Prioritize Notifications. Go to Settings > Notifications > Prioritize Notifications to enable or disable it, and you can select which apps it works with. When enabled, AI will try to determine if a notification is especially important and show it to you in a separate group on top of all your other notifications.

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Tweaks to the Photos app include a new “Key Photo” view mode for your Albums, two new filters for viewing your Photos library (Shared With You and Not in an Album), and the ability to edit the order of the Media Types list. Finally, I can select Screenshots without swiping three pages over!

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Image Playground is still a pretty bad experience, but at least it now has the Sketch style that was demonstrated back at WWDC. For certain kinds of drawings, it’s the best choice.

We all love emojis, and there are seven new ones in iOS 18.4: Face with bags under eyes, Fingerprint, Harp, Leafless tree, Root vegetable, Shovel, and Splatter.

If you’re an Apple News+ subscriber you’ll want to check out the new Food section, which does an excellent job presenting recipes from popular food publications. Look under the Following tab to find the Food section. Note that this is not yet available in the Apple News app on Macs.

You know how you can set up a new iPhone or iPad by bringing another iPhone or iPad near it? Well, now that works for setting up a new Mac, too! You’ll need to update the Mac to macOS 15.4 or later, of course.