Technologies

iOS 16.4: The New Features That Just Hit Your iPhone

The update brings new emoji, voice isolation in phone calls, and more to your iPhone.

The wait for iOS 16.4 is over. Apple rolled out iOS 16.4 on Monday, about a week after the company let developers and beta testers try the iOS 16.4 release candidate.

The update comes with a handful of bug and security fixes, as well as some new features. Some of the new features include new emoji, voice isolation for cellular calls, and more.

Here are some of the new features your iPhone gains with iOS 16.4.

31 new emoji

The iOS 16.4 update brings 31 new emoji to your iOS device. The new emoji include a new smiley; new animals, like a moose and a goose; and new heart colors, like pink and light blue.

9 of the new emoji, arranged in a grid on a pink background: peapod, hair pick, goose, hand, smiley, gray heart, maracas, donkey, wifi signal — Some of the new emoji released in iOS 16.4.

Patrick Holland/CNET

The new emoji all come from Unicode’s September 2022 recommendation list, Emoji 15.0.

Voice isolation comes to cellular calls

Voice isolation was introduced with iOS 15 in 2021, and at the time it worked only on FaceTime calls. Now with iOS 16.4, you can use the feature on your cellular calls too.

When enabled, voice isolation can help the person you’re on a call with hear you more clearly by muffling background sounds, like kids playing in the other room or construction outside your window. It could therefore cut back on the number of times you have to repeat yourself in a phone call because the other person can’t hear you.

Easily find photo duplicates across shared albums

In iOS 16.4, you can easily find duplicate photos in shared albums in Photos. If you share photos with family or friends via iCloud, iOS 16.4 will show you all the duplicates across albums. You can also Merge these duplicate photos.

Support for PlayStation 5 controller

According to MacRumors, iOS 16.4 adds support for the PlayStation 5 DualSense Edge Wireless Controller. You can use the controller to play controller-enabled games from services like Apple Arcade — a CNET Editors’ Choice award pick — on your iPhone.

DualSense Edge Review: Sony’s Premium Controller for PlayStation 5

See at CNET

Apple Books update

The page-turn curl animation is back in Apple Books with iOS 16.4, after it was removed in a previous iOS update. Before, when you turned a page in an ebook on your iPhone, the page would slide to one side of your screen or it would vanish and be replaced by the next page. You can still choose these other page-turn animations in addition to the curl animation.

Music app changes

The Kid Cudi album Man On the Moon artwork with the track list below — A small banner appears at the bottom of the screen when you choose to play a song next in Apple Music in iOS 16.4

Zach McAuliffe/CNET

The Music interface has been slightly modified in iOS 16.4. When you add a song to your queue, a small banner appears near the bottom of your screen instead of a full-screen pop-up like in previous iOS versions.

Also, if you go into your Library in Music, you can organize your Library by Artist and tap into an artist, across the top of your page you will see an icon for that artist. A search bar used to be at the top of this page. Tap the artist’s icon and you will be taken to that artist’s Music page.

Apple Podcasts updates

Apple Podcasts also gets an update with iOS 16.4. Now you can access a Channels tab in your Library, which shows you different networks you follow. Tap into each channel and you see can the shows you subscribe to and other shows that channel produces.

See who and what is covered under AppleCare

With iOS 16.4, you can go to Settings > General > About > Coverage to check who and what devices are covered on your AppleCare plan. That way, if your AirPods break, you can easily check whther they are covered. You can manage your coverage from here too.

Focus Mode filters added

If you have an iPhone 14 Pro or Pro Max, iOS 16.4 lets you enable or disable the always-on display option with certain Focus Modes. When creating a new filter, scroll down to the bottom of the edit page, tap Focus Filter, then tap Always-On Display to enable or disable the display for that Focus Mode.

New Apple Wallet features

You can add three new order-tracking widgets for Apple Wallet to your home screen with iOS 16.4. Each widget displays your tracking information on active orders, but the widgets are different sizes: small, medium and large.

No Active Orders displayed in the Apple Wallet widget — The medium-size Apple Wallet order tracking widget takes up three tile spaces on your iPhone’s screen.

Zach McAuliffe/CNET

More accessibility options

The update also adds new accessibility options. One new option is called Dim Flashing Lights, and it can be found in the Motion menu in Settings. The option’s description says video content that depicts repeated flashing or strobing lights will automatically be dimmed. Video timelines will also show when flashing lights will occur. VoiceOver support has also been expanded to the maps and Weather apps.

Apple ID and beta software updates

Text that reads You can sign in with a different Apple ID that is enrolled in the Apple Beta Software Program or the Apple Developer Program — The latest iOS update lets you sign into another Apple ID to access other beta software.

Zach McAuliffe/CNET

With iOS 16.4, developers and beta testers can check whether their Apple ID is associated with the developer beta, public beta or both. If you have a different Apple ID, like one for your job, that has access to beta updates, iOS 16.4 also lets you switch to that account from your device.

New keyboards, Siri voices and language updates

This iOS 16.4 update also adds keyboards for the Choctaw and Chickasaw languages, and there are new Siri voices for Arabic and Hebrew. Language updates have also come to Korean, Ukrainian, Gujarati, Punjabi and Urdu.

Here are Apple’s release notes for iOS 16.4.

This update includes the following enhancements and bug fixes:
• 21 new emoji including animals, hand gestures, and objects are now available in emoji keyboard
• Notifications for web apps added to the Home Screen
• Voice Isolation for cellular calls prioritizes your voice and blocks out ambient noise around you
• Duplicates album in Photos expands support to detect duplicate photos and videos in an iCloud Shared Photo
Library
• VoiceOver support for maps in the Weather app
• Accessibility setting to automatically dim video when flashes of light or strobe effects are detected
• Fixes an issue where Ask to Buy requests from children may fail to appear on the parent’s device
• Addresses issues where Matter-compatible thermostats could become unresponsive when paired to Apple Home
• Crash Detection optimizations on iPhone 14 and iPhone
14 Pro models

For more, check out what was included in iOS 16.3.1 and features you may have missed in iOS 16.3.

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Apple’s New Smart Home Display Delayed Until Fall Over Siri Issues

It has been nearly a year and a half since the company announced the AI-powered product.

Your home could get smarter with Apple’s Siri, but it will have to wait a few more months. Bloomberg reported the iPad-shaped AI home hub won’t be ready until September, several months after the company was hoping to launch it this spring. Apple engineers first need to complete work on a new and improved Siri assistant for the home device, code-named J490, according to Bloomberg.

Apple was hoping to release J490 this month, along with a slew of other new devices, including the iPhone 17e, MacBook Neo, MacBook Air M5, new Pro models, and iPad Air M4. Apple first teased the smart home display in November 2024.

A representative for Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Siri is Apple’s virtual assistant that uses voice recognition and AI to fulfill a variety of tasks and commands, along with intriguing uses. You might use Siri to find your iPhone — «Hey Siri, where are you?» — or to hear the weather forecast — «Siri, what will the weather be today?» Siri is available on iPhones, MacBooks and iPads. It was launched in 2011 as a feature of the iPhone 4S.

As CNET reported last month, Apple engineers have struggled to push the upgraded Siri assistant out the door. It isn’t fast enough, gets confused by complex commands and doesn’t interact well with other Apple AI models. The company is also wrestling with how much personal data to access to inform the AI, and the new Siri is not yet able to complete in-app tasks, such as finding a photo and posting it to socials, all with one command.

It has been nearly two years since Apple announced that it would give Siri a major upgrade. In the meantime, competitors like Alexa Plus and Gemini for Home have entered the marketplace.

Tech tester Jon Rettinger, whose YouTube channel has 1.66 million subscribers, says the repeated delays in upgrading Siri can «erode» confidence in Apple’s ability to keep up in the AI race.

«Apple as a whole is still one of the strongest companies on the planet. But their AI play is clearly the weakest link in an otherwise very strong chain,» Rettinger told CNET.

Rettinger said he has had issues getting Siri to complete basic commands, such as setting two alarms at the same time, and that it’s a bit of «a mess» right now.

«Having said that, the iPhone has such massive market penetration that I’m not sure it will actually matter in the end. Which is kind of wild when you think about it,» Rettinger said.

Facial recognition for residents

The hardware for the forthcoming smart home display has already been finished. It resembles an iPad and can be either attached to a wall or rest on a half-domed-shaped base, the Bloomberg report said.

The device will be equipped with facial recognition, so when residents walk up to it, they will be shown personalized data such as music preferences, news headlines, appointments, reminders, tasks and so on.

The screen interface will include a bunch of circular app icons, similar to the display on an Apple Watch. The Bloomberg report said the smart home display will be the first of several home devices by Apple. Future products include a tabletop robotic limb with a 9-inch screen, a smart security camera and a Face ID-enabled smart doorbell.