iPadOS 18.4 Beta 1 is Here!
Here’s some of the improvements.
After a longer-than average wait for a new beta after 18.3 dropped to the public last month, Apple dropped the first beta of iPadOS 18.4 yesterday. This update will bring Apple Intelligence features support to other languages for the first time. It also introduces some new features, and we may see yet more features roll out in coming betas. Here are some of the new features and enhancements coming in iPadOS 18.4!
New Language Support for Apple Intelligence
Apple Intelligence will be available in non-English language support now for the first time. Users will now be able to use Apple Intelligence in a range of new languages. Apple says that Apple Intelligence will support these languages when iPadOS 18.4, iOS 18.4, and macOS 15.4 drop to the public in early April:
Chinese (Simplified), English (India, Singapore), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish.
Prioritize Notifications
The new Apple Intelligence Priority Notifications feature Apple announced last year at WWDC24 is finally debuting in iPadOS 18.4! This feature is designed to bring the notifications that the on-device AI model deems most time sensitive and important to the top of the stack on the device’s Lock Screen and Notification Center. While this isn’t one of the most flashy Apple Intelligence features Apple is still set to release, it will be a boon for those who tend to miss important notifications in the sea of notifications that can come in at any given time.
Mail Categorization is Now Available on iPadOS
This is the change I’m the most excited about in this first beta. Apple introduced Mail Categorization to iOS 18.2 on the iPhone several months ago, but it didn’t make it onto iPadOS for some reason, perhaps there were issues with the iPad and Mac implementation that caused the delay. Now, iPadOS 18.4 Beta 1 introduces this feature to the iPad for the first time. For those unfamiliar with Mail Categorization, it is a feature that automatically organizes mail in the Mail app into tidy categories for things like promotional emails, transactions, and updates. You can also still categorize by “All Mail” by swiping left on the “Primary” category. New icons next to the emails also help in creating easier visual differentiation, and makes it easier to find important emails. Users who would rather continue to use the traditional Mail list view can do so by selecting the 3-dot options button at the top right hand corner of the sidebar in the Mail app on iPadOS. There users can choose between “Categories” and “List View”. There is also a helpful “About Categories” section that explains the functionality of each of the categories listed in the Categories view. I have found this Mail Categorization feature to be useful for sifting through my emails on my iPhone, but I will likely get much more use out of it now on my iPad where it’s likely to be more useful for me.
New Control Center Controls
The “Add a Control” menu for Control Center now includes a new set of Control Center Controls for Ambient Music. Ambient Music is available in the categories “Sleep”, “Chill”, “Productivity”, and “Wellbeing”. Each of these controls plays a different soundtrack that users can control via the “Now Playing” option in Control Center.
The Cellular Control Center icon also now indicates signal strength with highlighted bars in the icon.
New Connection Security Page Action in Safari
One new feature I spotted in Safari is a new option in the Page Menu under Page Actions. This new change allows users to check the security status of their connection to a web page. It shows details like the web pages “digital certificates”. These certificates are issued by trusted organizations to ensure that web pages can be verified as legitimate. Now these certificates and other connection security details for web pages are more readily visible in Safari with iPadOS 18.4.
New Style in Image Playground
Image Playground is a playful AI-powered image generator included with Apple Intelligence. It generates images from text prompts, photos from the Photos app, or a combination of both, and a user can select the style they want the resulting image to be rendered in. In iPadOS 18.3, those options are “Animation” and “Illustration”. The first beta of iPadOS 18.4 now includes a new style called “Sketch”. Images generated with this style look like a pencil drawing as you’d expect. Of the styles on offer so far, I think it’s my favorite overall.
New App Category in Default Apps
The Default Apps section in the Settings app, introduced in iPadOS 18.2, allows users to select a default app for a range of different categories. In iPadOS 18.4, there is now a new category for setting a default translation app.
More Features Possibly to Come
Rumors about iPadOS 18.4 indicated that it would introduce new Siri enhancements including on-screen awareness, deeper app controls, and personal context. While there aren’t any signs of these changes in the first beta of iPadOS 18.4, Apple has chosen to drop similar features in later betas before, so it’s possible we could still see these improvements come to iPadOS 18.4 in a later beta or in the final public release version. There are rumors that these changes have been pushed back to iPadOS 18.5. We’ll see in the coming weeks if Apple incorporates these features in 18.4, but they should be coming in a future iPadOS 18 update either way.