iOS 26.4 and iPadOS 26.4
Juli Clover (iOS/iPadOS release notes, security, enterprise, developer):
iOS 26.4 adds a new Apple Music feature called Playlist Playground, which uses AI to generate playlists for you based on text-based prompts. You can ask for moods, feelings, occasions, and more when making a request.
iOS 26.4 was released today, and it includes a couple of new features for CarPlay: an Ambient Music widget and support for voice-based chatbot apps.
Apple Music gets several updates in iOS 26.4, including a new fullscreen design for albums and playlists.
The iOS 26.4 attempt is a much nicer interpretation of this idea. First and foremost, it doesn’t try too hard; the foreground text colour is only ever white or black. The background is colour-matched, which injects a splash of personality and helps make the full-bleed album art blend more seamlessly with the rest of the UI. The Liquid Glass toolbars and tab bars also neatly blend in with their colourful surroundings. The design is impactful, yet refined.
iOS 26.4 expands customization tools with two settings:
- Reduce Bright Effects, which is brand new in iOS 26.4
- Reduce Motion, which has been updated in iOS 26.4
In my testing, this does exactly what you would expect. In places like toolbar buttons — or the buttons in the area of what is left of a toolbar, anyhow — the passcode entry screen, and Control Centre, the glowing tap effects are minimized or removed.
Apple has made a small but useful change to the way that Family Sharing works. Each adult member of the family can now use their own payment method for purchases, rather than being forced to share a payment method.
Apple has removed the RCS end-to-end encryption beta in the fourth beta of iOS 26.4 after testing it in the prior three betas. Apple already said that end-to-end encryption for RCS would not launch in the iOS 26.4 update, and would instead be introduced in the future.
The iOS 26.4 update […] includes improvements for the built-in iOS keyboard. In its notes for the software, Apple says iOS 26.4 offers “improved keyboard accuracy when typing quickly.”
Previously:
- iOS 26.4: Stolen Device Protection Enabled by Default
- iOS 26.3 and iPadOS 26.3
- iOS 18 and iOS 26 Autocorrect
- iOS 26 Developer Beta 3
- Encrypted RCS Standard
