Last week, Apple deployed iOS 18.4 to the public, an update that added additional emojis, a new recipe section on Apple News and an improved control center with new practical features.
Although the update is due as much attention to what is not included (that is to say, the delayed Siri overhaul of Apple) as what is, there is still a lot to be excited if you have one of the best iPhones.
With iOS 18.4, Apple has added several new shortcuts to its control center, including certain control options powered by the AI which are absolutely worth checking if you are new in the latest version of Apple’s iPhone software.
Here are three upgrades introduced with iOS 18.4 that make your phone control center that ever.
Ambient music
Apple has deployed a good number of upgrades focused on productivity with iOS 18, but the new ambient music function added with iOS 18.4 takes the cake. It allows you to play tunes in the background directly from the lock screen of your phone or the control center.
As with the rest of the shortcuts in the control center, you will first need to add the option. Simply slide down the upper right corner of your iPhone screen to access the control center, then press and hold the screen to modify it. Press add a check and you will see four new ambient music options: sleep, cooling, productivity and well-being.
My colleague Philip Michaels qualified Ambient Music as his favorite addition iOS 18.4. Each of the four genres has a separate sound, he said; Productivity offers “stable rhythm rhythms which are clearly intended to prevent you from beating the work in front of you” while Chill is more soft and well-being is based strongly on the soft piano game.
You can add one or more controls if you have the space. Once your choices are in your control center, just press this control to play music in the background. You can then take a break or stop music using regular reading commands of your iPhone.
For even faster access, you can also customize lock screen controls in iOS 18 to add an ambient musical control at the bottom of your locking screen. In this way, your jams are always at hand, whatever your mood.
Expanded visual intelligence
In the Apple Intelligence section and Siri newly renowned for the Catalog of the Control Center, you will find two new control options next to the existing Siri One type. The first is Visual Intelligence, a new feature initially announced when Apple launched the iPhone 16 range last year.
Introduced with iOS 18.2, visual intelligence is essentially Apple’s response to Google Lens, allowing you to use your iPhone’s camera as a search tool. Simply handle your phone’s camera on something, and visual intelligence will run through the web for more information or use Chatgpt to describe what you are looking at. You can also use it to translate text into another language, capture hours and dates of upcoming events you see on a leaflet, etc.
Until this last update, Visual Intelligence was exclusive to the iPhone 16 series because these devices had the camera control button. Now, users of the iPhone 15 Pro or the iPhone 15 Pro can also try it, because iOS 18.4 adds a shortcut to launch the visual intelligence that you can attach to the action button on your phone. Make sure to consult our guide on how to configure visual intelligence on an iPhone 15 Pro.
Talk to Siri
Talk to Siri is the other new option added in the Apple Intelligence and Siri section of the Control Center catalog. It triggers Siri in voice mode, allowing you to interact with the Apple virtual assistant to search for the web, access your calendar, etc.
It is not a huge upgrade, but this improvement in quality of life works well alongside the type existing for Siri, who does the same thing via Siri’s own keyboard rather than voice.
IOS 18.4 was supposed to introduce an overhaul fed by AI of the Apple virtual assistant, including new features that made Siri more aware of the context and capable of interacting with applications on your phone.
However, last month, Apple confirmed that the Siri overhaul would be delayed, speculation suggesting that we may not see these features promised before 2026 or later. So we probably have a while to wait on this front.
