iOS 18.4 Beta 1 Update for iPhone Brings Priority Notifications, New Style in Image Playground: What’s New

Apple on Friday rolled out the iOS 18.4 Beta 1 update for iPhone, bringing new features including those powered by Apple Intelligence — the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) suite. The update introduces Priority Notifications, a feature which Apple previewed at WWDC 2024 in June while introducing iOS 18 but was yet to be released. As the name suggests, it analyses notifications to single out the ones it considers important and displays them in a separate section on the iPhone’s lock screen.

iOS 18.4 Beta 1 Update: What’s New

As per Apple, Priority Notifications on iPhone uses on-device AI processing to analyse the contents of the notifications. The company emphasises that this method helps determine their importance while maintaining privacy. While only prioritised notifications are displayed when it is in action, users can swipe up to view all notifications.

This feature is turned off by default and can be toggled by navigating to Settings > Notifications > Prioritise Notifications.

iOS 18.4 Beta 1 Update for iPhone is Now Available for Download

Another change as part of the iOS 18.4 Beta 1 update is a new Ambient Music option in the Control Centre. It plays a random selection of sounds from four different categories — Sleep, Chill, Productivity, and Wellbeing. Its functionality is said to be limited as users cannot choose which tracks are played although they can still see what’s currently being played and skip them through the music player embedded in the Dynamic Island.

The company says it has added a new style to the Image Playground app dubbed Sketch, which joins the existing Animation and Illustration styles. The same was previously available in Image Wand but has now been introduced to Image Playground too, enabling users to choose between three different styles.

As expected, the update expands support for Apple Intelligence to more languages and locales. It now includes support for Chinese (Simplified), English (India, Singapore), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil) and Spanish languages.

Other minor changes include new text for Genmoji in the emoji keyboard, option to set preferred language in Apple Maps, new Library and Shows widgets for the home screen, and an option to set a default Translation app.