Updated March 31 with full details of the release and how to get it.

The next big Apple iPhone update has been released on Monday, March 31—sooner than many thought it would come, as Apple had previously said it would land in April. Mind you, as you’ll see from the final paragraph here, today was also a possibility.

Apple iOS 18.4

Apple

Anyway, iOS 18.4, has new Apple Intelligence features for the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max and iPhone 16 series, including the newly released iPhone 16e. There’s no giant leap for Siri, which made its own headlines recently. There are also new emoji (including one you’ll surely need) and a new Vision Pro app. Here’s all you need to know.

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The latest cycle of iPhone software, iOS 18, is compatible with all iPhones from the iPhone Xs from 2018 onwards. That means the iPhone Xs, iPhone Xs Max and iPhone Xr and all iPhones after that, including the iPhone SE in both its second- and third-generation models. And all members of the iPhone 16 series are included, right up to the iPhone 16e.

How To Get It

In the iPhone Settings app, click on General, then choose Software Update. Next, you want Download and Install, and you can sit back and let the software download. This is a sizeable update, 3.76GB on my iPhone 16 Pro Max. Downloading and installing it took around 10 minutes.

What’s In The Release

There’s a lot here. Let’s start with the Apple Intelligence updates, which apply to iPhone 16 models, including iPhone 16e plus the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Chief among the Apple Intelligence features is Priority Notifications. This sorts through messages and other notifications to bring the important ones to your attention. The idea is that you won’t be swamped by notifications so the important ones get missed.

A new style is coming to Image Playground, called Sketch, to go with Animation and Illustration: which means you now have another way to let your imagination take flight.

From this release, Apple Intelligence will be supported for eight more languages including French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. Plus, English for speakers in India and Singapore.

The new emoji include a new Smiley with bags under their eyes—that’s the one that I think is going to prove very popular. There’s also a fingerprint (also useful), a splatter, a root vegetable, leafless tree, a harp, shovel and the flag for the island of Sark.

If you have an Apple Vision Pro, the iPhone will download a new companion app to your iPhone automatically. The app is designed to help you find new content for the headset or access details about your Vision Pro.

There are tweaks to the Photos app which will see new ways to order items, new filters so you can show or hide items in the Library view, and options for sorting albums. You can also disable recently viewed or recently shared items, reorder items in different collections, and choose consistent filtering options in collections, for instance opting to sort by oldest or newest first in Photos. If you have photos in the Hidden section, these will no longer be included for import to the Mac or PC if the setting to use Face ID is on.

If you’re a News+ subscriber, there’ll be a new emphasis on food, with recipes from multiple publishers, additions to the Food section for stories about restaurants, kitchen tips, and a Recipe Catalog where you can search for dishes and save them to Saved Recipes.

With this update there are also improvements to recent search suggestions in Safari so you can easily get back to previous search topics as you start a new search. Parents’ setup for a Child Account is more streamlined and means that child-appropriate default settings can be enabled if the parent prefers to complete set-up later. Kids clever enough to uninstall and reinstall an app to circumvent Screen Time limits will find this loophole has now been closed.

You can now pause an app download in the App Store and resume it later without losing progress. The useful Ambient Music for iPhone is now accessible directly from Control Center, which is much more convenient.

If you have a Matter-compatible robot vacuum cleaner, this can bow be controlled in the Home app, or it can be added to scenes and automations.

There’s a new widget for Podcasts, including one called Followed Shows which lets you track your favorite shows. A Library widget lets you get quickly to the sections you use most, such as latest episodes, or saved or downloaded. Apple Fitness+ collections can now be added to the Library, which is also more useful.

iOS 18.4 Release Date: Sooner Than Expected

Apple had dropped hints about the release date, so we knew early April was on the cards. The arrival of a second Release Candidate beta on March 28 suggests Apple has got ahead of itself and it will be sooner that we thought.

It looks like it will be Tuesday, April 1 at 10 a.m. Pacific. But Apple has recently taken to releasing software on a Monday so I think Monday, March 31, though less likely, just might be a possibility, too. And it turns out, that’s what Apple had in mind.

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