Apple Seeds iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 Release Candidate With Priority Notifications, Ambient Music and More

Apple today seeded the release candidate versions of upcoming iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 updates to developers for testing purposes, with the software coming a week after Apple released the fourth betas.

Generic iOS 18
iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 can be downloaded from the Settings app on a compatible device by going to General > Software Update.

With iOS 18.4, Apple is adding the Priority Notifications Apple Intelligence feature, which is designed to determine which of your notifications are the most important, highlighting them in an easy-to-see dedicated section on the Lock Screen.

The update includes a new Apple News+ Food section for ‌Apple News‌+ subscribers, plus it adds the Sketch style to Image Playground so you can generate images that look hand drawn. ‌Apple Intelligence‌ is also available in more languages, including French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese (simplified), along with localized English for Singapore and India.

There are new emoji characters, and a dedicated Vision Pro app that allows Vision Pro owners to find and download content, manage the headset, control guest experiences, and more, right from the iPhone.

Mail Categorization has expanded to the iPad, and there's a new Ambient Music feature for playing relaxing music from Control Center. There are a number of other smaller features too, with details available in our iOS 18.4 features guide.

Apple plans to release iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 in early April, and the RC represents the final version of the software that will be provided to the public should no issues be found.

Related Roundups: iOS 18, iPadOS 18
Related Forums: iOS 18, iPadOS 18

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Top Rated Comments

attohs Avatar
4 weeks ago
Please ? fix a bug, any bug. Stop throwing new bugs at me and just squash one. I beg you.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
diego.caraballo Avatar
4 weeks ago
18.4 “Rushed Edition”
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
tywebb13 Avatar
4 weeks ago
build number for both is 22E239

here are builds of the other stuff released today

iPadOS 17.7.6 RC (21H423)
macOS 15.4 RC (24E246)
macOS 14.7.5 RC 5 (23H527)
macOS 13.7.5 RC 5 (22H527)
tvOS 18.4 RC (22L254)
audioOS 18.4 RC (22L254)
visionOS 2.4 RC (22O237)
watchOS 11.4 RC (22T250)
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sw1tcher Avatar
4 weeks ago

Bugs are very beneficial. Ohhhhh... you mean softwae bugs. Please enlighten us to a bug that's interfering with your daily usage.
Might not be a bug that affects you, but the no notification from Mail app (iOS 18.3.2) for incoming emails is annoying if you need to know when important work emails come in. Now I have to manually check every so often so I don't accidentally miss something.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255969944?sortBy=rank

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mail-notification-sound-non-op.2449146/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/18-3-2-ios-ipados-no-mail-notifications-or-updates.2452926/
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ghostface147 Avatar
4 weeks ago
Jeez, Verizon’s network had me download the full build in like two minutes. Not bad for 7.3 gigs.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Shorty89 Avatar
4 weeks ago

App Updates is finally fixed (broken since 18.2) ….no longer crashes when large amounts of apps need updating
Never had that issue TBH. Have updated 25 apps once and went through ok for 16 pro max
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)