iOS 26.4: Here are all the new features for your iPhone

3 days ago

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iOS 26.4: Here are all the new features for your iPhone

iOS 26.4 is currently in beta testing with developers and public beta users. The update adds a range of new features to the iPhone, including improvements to Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, Messages, and more.

Here are all the new iPhone features in iOS 26.4, and everything else you need to know.

Details for iOS 26.4

iOS 26.4 is available in beta right now for developers and public beta users. The latest iOS 26.4 beta 3 is the latest release, with new builds expected soon.

iOS 26.4 is expected to be released to everyone sometime in late March or early April, as my colleague Ryan previously noted. For example, iOS 18.4 was released on March 31.

iOS 26.4: New features

Apple Music

Apple Music is a big focus in iOS 26.4, adding many new features and design changes:

Concerts: The ability to find concerts near you and tour dates for artists in your Apple Music Library.
New full-screen artwork “brings your music to life” for albums and playlists.
A “Redesigned” section with easy access to managing your account, subscriptions, and more.
Support for adding a song to more than one playlist at a time.

A playground for playlists

And for Apple Music, iOS 26.4 adds a new Playlist Playground feature. This allows you to create playlists using Apple Intelligence by providing text descriptions. For example, you can type in something like “1990s sad songs for a rainy day” and Apple Music will automatically create a playlist based on that information.

Once the Playlist Playlist has generated a playlist, you can iterate over it with other information without starting the process over.

This feature is still in beta, so it’s not perfect. Still, it’s an example of how Apple integrates Apple Intelligence into the entire iPhone experience.

Read more: iOS 26.4 beta adds new AI ‘playlist’ feature to Apple Music

New widgets

iOS 26.4 adds a new collection of Ambient music widgets that you can add to your iPhone’s home screen. This allows you to start playing music with the advantage of one of the four senses:

Chill out
Production
Sleep
To live well

The widget is available in small and medium sizes.

Reminders app

In iOS 26.2, Apple added a new “urgent” task name to the Reminders app. If you mark a task as done, the Reminders app will also set an alarm to remind you about it.

iOS 26.4 builds on this by adding a new Smart List that defines all tasks you’ve selected as urgent.

RCS Encryption for Messages

Last March, Apple announced its plans to add end-to-end encryption support for RCS messages.

iOS 26.4 adds support for testing this feature. Once updated to iOS 26.4 beta 2, iPhone users can go to Settings > Messages > RCS Messages and look for the new “End-to-End Encryption (Beta)” switch — which should be enabled by default.

Additionally, if you send a message to someone with RCS encryption enabled, you’ll see a new lock icon in the chat thread. That icon will also appear in the iMessage series, as iMessage has supported encryption since 2011.

Apple, however, says that RCS end-to-end encryption will not ship as part of iOS 26.4. Instead, it’s included in this beta for testing purposes and Apple says it will be available in a future iOS 26 update.

Apple Podcasts

iOS 26.4 brings a major update to Apple Podcasts with “advanced video podcast capabilities.”

This update makes it easy to switch between watching a video podcast and listening to an audio podcast. The features are powered by Apple’s HLS technology, which allows automatic quality adjustment based on network conditions.

Apple also added support for dynamic video ads to Apple Podcasts with iOS 26.4.

Read more: The Apple Podcasts app is getting an ‘improved video podcast experience’ in iOS 26.4

Apple Health

iOS 26.4 adds more Sleep and Vitals data to the Apple Health app. There’s a new average sleep time metric, which lets you track your average sleep time and last night’s sleep time for comparison.

Blood Oxygen readings are also added to the Vitals graph. This comes after Apple introduced a “redesigned” version of the feature last August amid an ongoing patent dispute.

Read more: iOS 26.4 adds more Sleep and Vitals data to Apple Health

Stolen Device Protection

Stolen Device Protection is now enabled by default in iOS 26.4. If this feature is enabled, you’ll need to authenticate with Face ID to perform certain tasks when you’re away from trusted places like home and work. It also includes a time delay for the second biometric authentication for certain sensitive actions.

Prior to iOS 26.4, Stolen Device Protection had to be manually enabled by iPhone users.

Other iOS 26.4 features and changes

In the App Store and Games apps, Apple has returned the search bar to the top of the search tab. The tab is also now integrated into the bottom navigation bar instead of being separated from its floating circle.
The background gallery has been redesigned in iOS 26.4 with more separation between the different categories of available options.
The Apple Watch face gallery has been redesigned with more separation between the different options.
iOS 26.4 adds a new “Reduce Highlight Effects” to the Settings access menu. This change should reduce the lighting effects on the edges of buttons, sliders, and app icons, but it’s not fully functional yet.
If your iPhone is in Dark Mode, the menu buttons in Control Center will also now appear with a dark background.
Freeform Creator Studio is now live for subscribers.
iOS 26.4 adds a new iCloud setting allowing users to enable a setting that allows them to search for Photos and iCloud Drive content on iCloud.com.

iOS 26.4 rollout

Apple will likely make more changes to iOS 26.4 as beta testing continues. In the meantime, what is your favorite change? What do you think of the new features in Apple Music? Let us know down in the comments.