Apple Releases iOS 18.4, macOS 15.4, and Other x.4 OS Updates

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Originally published at: Apple Releases iOS 18.4, macOS 15.4, and Other x.4 OS Updates - TidBITS

Apple has released what may be the final notable feature releases of its 2024 operating systems, including iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4, macOS 15.4 Sequoia, watchOS 11.4, visionOS 2.4, tvOS 18.4, and HomePod Software 18.4. The company also released older versions of iOS, iPadOS, and macOS with fixes for exploited security vulnerabilities that had already been patched in current releases.

Despite Siriā€™s conspicuous absence from the announcements (see ā€œApple Delays ā€œMore Personalizedā€ Siri,ā€ 7 March 2025), these releases focus heavily on Apple Intelligence, which is now available in more languages in nearly all geographic regions, including the EU. Supported languages now include French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese (simplified), as well as localized English for Singapore and India. Apple also shipped the promised Priority Notifications feature for the iPhone and iPad, though not the Mac, and brought an initial set of Apple Intelligence features to the Vision Pro.

Photos on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac receives substantial organizational improvements. You can now filter the Library view to show or hide items synced from a computer or not contained in albums. The app offers the same filtering options in all collections, including the ability to sort by oldest or newest first, and you can sort albums by modification date. The Media Types and Utilities collections can be reordered to match your workflow, and you can turn off the Recently Viewed and Recently Shared collections if you find them unnecessary. Plus, if you use Face ID to protect hidden photos, they wonā€™t be included when importing to a Mac or PC.

These updates also expand Mail categorization across Appleā€™s platforms. After debuting in iOS 18.2, the feature now comes to both iPadOS 18.4 and macOS 15.4, automatically sorting email into Primary, Transactions, Updates, and Promotions categories. While the categorization isnā€™t perfect, you can manually recategorize messages to improve its accuracy over time.

Apple Mail categorization

Other features common to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac include support for Matter-compatible robot vacuum cleaners in the Home app, new Followed Shows and Library widgets in Podcasts, Screen Time App Limits that persist even if a child uninstalls and reinstalls an app (I wonder how long it took kids to figure out that workaround), and eight new emoji.

Letā€™s look at the more specific features of each release.

iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4

For those with an Apple Intelligence-compatible device, iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 bring the debut of Priority Notifications, which appear at the top of your notifications to highlight those that may warrant immediate attention. It analyzes the content of the notifications to determine which should appear, but you can turn the feature off for any apps whose notifications are never important. Weā€™ll see if this feels like a noteworthy improvement or just another tweak for those who havenā€™t already tamed their notifications using previous systems.

Priority Notifications

The other promised Apple Intelligence feature is a Sketch style for Image Playground that joins the Animation and Illustration styles. Itā€™s tough to be enthusiastic about Sketch in Image Playground the week after OpenAI released a new image generation feature in ChatGPT 4o that creates vastly more impressive images and lets you tweak portions of the image through text prompts rather than submitting updated prompts that generate an entirely new image.

Image Playground vs ChatGPT 4o

Apple News+ subscribers gain a new Food section that provides access to tens of thousands of recipes from major recipe publishers, complete with a Recipe Catalog for browsing and searching, plus a Cooking mode that makes following recipes easier. The Food section also includes restaurant reviews, kitchen tips, and articles about healthy eating. Those who donā€™t subscribe to Apple News+ will see a subset of stories and recipes. This feature may encourage people to subscribe to Apple News+ given the influence of publishers like Allrecipes, Bon AppĆ©tit, Food & Wine, Good Food, and Serious Eats in the foodie world (but also see ā€œFilling Out Your Cookbook Shelves with ckbk,ā€ 12 May 2023). A big question is if youā€™ll be able to save recipes to a recipe management app like Paprika and Mela.

Other improvements include:

  • Safariā€™s recent search suggestions now help you quickly return to previous search topics (Safari 18.4 also features a boatload of new WebKit features under the hood.)
  • Streamlined Setup Assistant steps for creating Child Accounts (see ā€œApple Aims to Boost Child Privacy with New Age-Related Controls,ā€ 7 March 2025)
  • App Store summaries for user reviews
  • The ability to pause and resume App Store downloads without losing progress
  • An Ambient Music feature in Control Center offers hand-curated playlists of free music for activities like relaxation, productivity, sleep, and wellbeing
  • Apple Fitness+ Collections can now be added to the Library
  • Support for 10 new system languages, including Bangla, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu

Iā€™ve been running beta versions of iOS 18.4 since Apple started releasing them, and Iā€™ve noticed that the iPhoneā€™s motion detection in StandBy is far less sensitive than in the past. Previously, when I woke up at night, looking at the iPhone screen was enough to get it to light up with the time. Now I have to wave at it or even tap the screen. I consider this a bugā€”anything that requires me to move more or think about how to find out what time it is will make it harder to get back to sleep.

iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 include fixes for 60 vulnerabilities, though none are zero-days that are being exploited in the wild. Apple also updated previous versions of iOS and iPadOS with security fixes:

Although itā€™s not essential to update to iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 for security reasons, if youā€™re still running an older version of iOS or iPadOS, we strongly encourage you to update to the latest version available for your device.

macOS 15.4 Sequoia

On M-series Macs running macOS 15.4, Apple Intelligence now supports the same new languages as iPhone and iPad and includes the Sketch style in Image Playground. You can also create Memory movies by describing them in Photos, which was previously possible only on the iPhone and iPad. However, macOS did not receive the new Priority Notifications featureā€”perhaps it will appear in macOS 15.5.

macOS 15.4 also:

  • Adds the Retouch brush to the Clean Up tool in Photos
  • Fixes an issue that prevented certain external displays from turning off Night Shift
  • Solves a problem that caused VoiceOver to navigate elements in Music in an incorrect order
  • Addresses a bug where a Braille display could show an incorrect line when navigating lines with left or right arrows
  • Increases the default maximum memory allocation limit available to the GPU on the M3 Ultra Mac Studio with 256 GB or 512 GB of unified memory
  • Improves transcoding performance in Final Cut Pro on the M3 Ultra Mac Studio
  • Includes numerous changes and fixes for enterprise users

Although I donā€™t know what his source is, Howard Oakley adds:

  • Apple silicon Macs with an internal SD card reader now support SDUC cards larger than 2 TB
  • macOS 15.4 should resolve problems with some M4 Macs being unable to launch virtual machines
  • The Finder no longer fails to copy some dataless files from SMB file shares

On the security side, macOS 15.4 addresses what could be a record 128 vulnerabilities, none of which are known to be actively exploited in the wild. As with iOS and iPadOS, Apple also pushed out security releases for older versions of macOS:

  • macOS 14.7.5 Sonoma addresses 88 security vulnerabilities, including the exploited CoreMedia bug that was also fixed in iPadOS 17.7.6.
  • macOS 13.7.5 Ventura fixes 82 vulnerabilities, including the CoreMedia problem.
  • Safari 18.4 for Sonoma and Ventura resolves 13 vulnerabilities

Given the vast number of vulnerabilities fixed and the fact that one was exploited in the past, we recommend updating those older versions as soon as itā€™s convenient.

watchOS 11.4

Apple made only one change worth calling out to watchOS 11.4: an option to allow the Sleep Wake Up alarm to break through Silent Mode. Setting that option ensures you get an audible alarm even if your Apple Watch is in Silent Mode. Haptic notifications have worked well for me, but I could easily imagine someone sleeping through them.

watchOS 11.4 resolves a bug that caused face selection to become unresponsive when switching faces, and it provides 44 security fixes.

[After making watchOS 11.4 available briefly, Apple pulled the release and returned it the next day without indicating what might have changed. We donā€™t know if Apple made any changes to watchOS itself or if the fix merely addressed distribution issues. ā€“Adam]

visionOS 2.4

The big news in visionOS 2.4 is the arrival of Apple Intelligence features in US English, including Writing Tools with ChatGPT integration, Image Playground with all three styles, Genmoji support, natural language search in Photos, Smart Reply in Messages and Mail, Priority Messages in Mail, Mail Summaries, Image Wand in Notes, Priority Notifications, and Notification Summaries.

The update also introduces Spatial Gallery, a new app showcasing spatial photos, videos, and panoramas curated by Apple from well-known brands and artists. For those who share their Vision Pro with others, Guest User enhancements make it much easier to start a session from a nearby iPhone or iPad and let owners choose which apps guests can access. Finally, a new Vision Pro app on the iPhone helps users discover spatial experiences, queue apps and games to download, find tips, and access device information.

visionOS 2.4 addresses 36 security vulnerabilities.

tvOS 18.4 and HomePod Software Version 18.4

Although Apple acknowledges only ā€œperformance and stability improvementsā€ in tvOS 18.4, 9to5Mac reports that the Apple TV app receives some user interface changes. The update addresses 34 security vulnerabilities.

Unsurprisingly, HomePod Software 18.4 also receives only the usual ā€œperformance and stability improvements.ā€

Update Scenario

None of these updates are essential to update immediately, but thereā€™s nothing special about their predecessors, so I recommend waiting a week to see if any problems shake out and then installing when itā€™s convenient.

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UPDATE:

The problem appears to have resolved itself. Must have just been a delay in downloading the transaction history from Appleā€™s servers.

So the only outstanding question in my mind is whether subsequent Apple Card/Apple Pay purchases will or will not show up promptly in the wallet.

=====================

I just updated my iPhone 17 Pro from iOS 18.3.2 to 18.4 this afternoon.

Afterwards, I made a purchase at a local grocery using my Apple Card via Apple Pay. Unlike the hundreds of similar purchases Iā€™ve made in the 5+ years of having Apple Card, this purchase did not show up in the wallet (it normally would appear immediately, with a status of Pending).

I called Apple support to report my suspicion that iOS 18.4 had broken the transaction listing mechanism in my Apple Wallet. They had me talk to 2 people in Goldman Sachs, one of whom suggested removing Apple Card from my phone and re-adding it. After doing that, now the problem is infinitely worse: I can only see less than 1% of the hundreds of transactions Iā€™ve made since getting Apple Card in August 2019.

Now theyā€™re suggesting having a senior Apple tech advisor guide me through downgrading my iPhone back to iOS 18.3.2. I am quite leery of doing this.

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macOS 15.4 Sequoia

Wallpaper no longer allows you to set your own custom colour.

System Settings > Wallpaper > Colours > +

The screen default to a white background regardless of any colour you pick.

Until Apple resolve the issue, you need to select one of the 19 default plain colours of the system.

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Appleā€™s x.4.1 OS Updates Patch Exploited Security Vulnerabilities
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Something Iā€™d hoped to see mentioned here: Sometime in the course of recent MacOS updates, I started to experience sending messages from Mail taking between 3 and perhaps 7 or 8 tries before they would send. I reduced the frequency of Mail looking for new messages to every 5 min. and then every 15, and it reduced it to 2-4 tries, but thatā€™s still too many. Anyone else experiencing that? Any sign of it being fixed in version 4?? The error message I keep seeing is, ā€œThe attempt to read data from the server ā€œ127.0.0.1ā€ failed.ā€

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I have updated my M4 Mac mini (Japanese) to macOS Sequoia 15.4 this morning, but Apple Intelligence is still not available. System Settings > ā€˜Apple Intelligence and Siriā€™ page says: ā€œTo use Apple Intelligence, Mac and Siri must be set to the same language.ā€

My system language is set to Japanese, but I have set Siri to use English (US) because Japanese Siri is even less usable than English Siri.

So, I still canā€™t use Apple Intelligence, but I guess thatā€™s a good thing (maybe until the next year)ā€¦

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iPhone, iPad and Apple TV seem OK after the updates.

It is irritating that the setting for automatic updates is turned on after this update. At least there was on obscure alert about this during the process. Also the update nagged me to turn on Siri voice activation, which I never want. The only suitable choice was ā€œSet up laterā€ so I guess the nagging will return.

BTW - my iPad battery was draining very fast a couple of days ago. I read somewhere (maybe Tidbits) that some apps chew up battery if Background app refresh is enabled. Annoyingly I found that nearly all my apps had it set to ā€œonā€. I switched nearly all of them ā€œoffā€ and the battery issue has gone.

I hate it when the software decides these things for me!

Appleā€™s x.4.1 OS Updates Patch Exploited Security Vulnerabilities
Appleā€™s x.4.1 OS Updates Patch Exploited Security Vulnerabilities
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Iā€™m still not seeing the watch update - anyone else having this?

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No sign of the watchOS update this evening in Australia.

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Iā€™ve checked the Apple docs and not mentioned, so guess it was pulled or not released

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Finally! This bug has made it necessary to reboot my Watch several times a week since the introduction of WatchOS 10. Nevertheless, having learned from past experiences, I will wait at least a week before updating any of my devices, awaiting the absence of reports about new bugs that break things.

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Right here, I guess:

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Thatā€™s localhost. Are you using your own mail server, or perhaps the Proton Mail bridge app?

Iā€™ve read that the watch update was pulled shortly after release.

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Yes, this is a Proton Bridge issue. They had me change my outgoing port in response to a previous problem and also suggested the (partial) fix re: having Apple Mail scan for new messages less often.

But now itā€™s also happening when I send messages using my older email account and my old ISPā€™s SMTP server.

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I would say a bigger question is why in the world I would open a news app looking for recipes or why you would clutter up the news with recipes?

Furthermore, did Apple learn nothing from trying to shoehorn everything into iTunes back in the day?

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I love Paprika and hope Apple hasnā€™t messed with my ability to save recipes to this app. Plus, I donā€™t use Apple News and sure wouldnā€™t consider using a news apps to find recipes.

Ugh. Not a fan of this, Apple.

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I havenā€™t received it yet, either. None of the Apple news sites that I usually check (9to5Mac, MacRumors, MacWorld) have reported any delay, but I did find this via search:

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I believe that all the recipes in the News app are taken from newspapers and magazines that the News app covers. So, they have simply created another category and provided some useful features for material already appearing in the app.

This is similar to the Sports and Games sections of the app.

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Anecdotal, but I just tried on my 15.4 MacBook Air with the Proton Mail bridge. It sent mail fine, and there were no errors or messages.

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Iā€™d say if Apple has people with newspaper experience on its News+ content and advertising teams, recipes and food articlesā€”along with stories on fashion, entertainment, and sportsā€”feel like a natural fit for a news app because the multiple sections of a newspaper are the non-digital way to target advertising to specific groups.

So, many people who use News+ as an adjunct or a replacement for their traditional newspaper(s) will not be suprised (or will expect) to see non-hard news content in News+.

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I have an update scheduled tonight ā€” hoping itā€™ll help.