iOS 26.4: Top 10 New Features Coming to Your iPhone

What’s Happening

Let’s talk about 4 isn’t the major update with new Siri features that we hoped for, but there are some useful quality of life improvements, and a little bit of fun with an AI playlist generator and new emoji characters.

Playlist Playground - Apple Music has a Playlist Playground option that lets you generate playlists from text-based descriptions. You can include moods, feelings, activities, or make up something entirely nonsensical and let the AI figure out what you mean. (let that sink in)

4: Top 10 New Features Coming to Your iPhone Friday 2:44 pm PDT by Juli Clover iOS 26.

The Details

Ambient Music widget - Apple added a widget for the built-in Ambient Music feature in iOS, so it’s quicker to play background sounds. You can choose Sleep, Chill, Productivity, and Wellbeing playlists curated by Apple.

Emoji - There are eight new emoji characters including trombone, treasure chest, distorted face, hairy creature, fight cloud, orca, landslide, and ballet dancer. Reduce Bright Effects - If you dislike Liquid Glass, there’s a Reduce Bright Effects setting that cuts down on bright flashes when tapping buttons.

Why This Matters

Reduce Motion also limits Liquid Glass animations more than it did before. 4 fixes an iOS 26 keyboard bug that caused typos when typing quickly. Purchase Sharing - Adults in Family Sharing groups no longer have to use the same payment method, and Apple now lets everyone add their own credit or debit card.

This could have major implications for how we use technology going forward.

Key Takeaways

• CarPlay AI apps - CarPlay users can use third-party chatbots with CarPlay starting in iOS 26.
• Companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google will need to update their apps with CarPlay support, but the framework is in iOS 26.

The Bottom Line

Video Podcasts - The Podcasts app has native video episode support with HLS streaming, along with options to swap between audio and video and offline video downloads. Average Bedtime - The Sleep feature in the Health app now records average bedtime for the past two weeks to give you a better idea of how your bedtime impacts sleep.

What do you think about all this?