iOS 18.4 will primarily focus on Siri
It appears that Apple is preparing to release its next beta, which will bring significant improvements to its voice assistant.
Apple has been gradually introducing Apple Intelligence, with initial features debuting in iOS 18.1. These included Writing Tools, system-wide summaries, and Photos cleanup.
In the upcoming beta, Apple will test new features focused on Siri, including an app intent system that provides on-screen context for commands. Developers have been asked to work on this feature in iOS 18.2.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman announced the imminent release of iOS 18.4 beta 1 on Threads, stating, “I expect iOS 18.4 beta 1 to be released between the middle of next week and early the following week. So it’s coming fairly soon.”
Apple is also planning to expand Apple Intelligence to support more languages in iOS 18.4, including Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
There is speculation that the Unicode 16 update will be included, introducing seven new emoji characters such as root vegetable, face with bags under eyes, shovel, harp, splatter, leafless tree, and fingerprint.
iOS 18.3 was released to the public in late January, focusing on enhancing Apple Intelligence features, improving Visual Intelligence, addressing notification summary concerns, and enabling Apple Intelligence by default.