Apple Releases Third Public Betas of iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4 With New Emoji, Safari Web Push Notifications and More

Wednesday March 8, 2023 10:25 am PST by Juli Clover

Apple today seeded the third betas of upcoming iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4 updates to public beta testers, allowing non-developers to test the software ahead of its launch. Today's betas come one week after the release of the second public betas.

iOS 16
Public beta testers who have signed up for Apple's free beta testing program can download the ‌iOS 16.4‌ beta over the air after installing the proper certificate from the Public Beta website.

This is the last beta that will use certificates in this way as future beta updates will be linked to an Apple ID for both developers and public beta testers.

The iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4 updates add a number of new emoji characters, including shaking head, pink heart, blue heart, gray heart, donkey, moose, black bird, goose, wing, jellyfish, hyacinth, pea pod, ginger, fan, comb, flute, maracas, and left and right facing hand options.

Safari Web Push notifications are available, but web developers will need to add support. With this feature, you can add a website to your Home Screen and the website can send you push notifications, just like on the Mac. These notifications behave like any other iOS notification and can be filtered out with Focus mode, delivered on Apple Watch, and more.

There's a new add to ‌Home Screen‌ option for third-party browsers so you can add a favorite Chrome site directly to your ‌Home Screen‌, plus the HomeKit architecture upgrade that was pulled from iOS 16.2 is now available again. The second beta reintroduces the page turning animation in Apple Books, and it has hints of Apple Music Classical.

Apple has made minor tweaks to the Podcasts app, ‌Apple Music‌ app, and the AppleCare coverage interface, plus there are new Shortcuts, 5G connectivity in Turkey, an option to add an always-on display filter to Focus more, and more. Full details on everything new can be found in our dedicated iOS 16.4 guide.

Related Forum: iOS 16

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Top Rated Comments

Akrapovic

48 months ago

Emojis. I’m so glad that they’re putting their resources into things that really matter.

I know you think you're being funny, but conforming to the Unicode standards actually is important. It does matter. These are the standards which allow devices and operating systems to talk to each other and actually make sense. Without conforming to the standard, if someone used an emoji that Apple decided it didn't want to bother with, you'd see a square, or similar placeholder icon. And it's not just limited to emoji - it defines all characters. Unicode is why Apple, or Microsoft, or Google, or Samsung can't just wake up one day and decide "Hey I think supporting the letter K is too much bother, so why don't we just drop that? Nobody uses it, and C is just fine".

So yes, having artists spend a tiny bit of their time drawing, and having a junior operating system engineer spend a tiny bit of their time updating the Unicode code for iOS/macOS/iPadOS/etcOS really does matter.

Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)

contacos

48 months ago

I hope in iOS 17 they add search for emoji. It is truly hard to find a specific one, and time consuming. Also it would be nice if we set a skin tone for one emoji it applies to all of them. Having to set each one manually is dumb. Lastly a favorite section for emoji would be nice.

What do you mean? There is already a search