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iOS 26.4 is days from public release, and the Siri overhaul still isn't in it. But four substantive features shipped: AI-generated playlists, a redesigned Podcasts video experience, CarPlay chatbot access, and automatic Stolen Device Protection. Here is what the update actually delivers, when to expect it, and what the Siri absence really means.
Apple's fourth major iOS 26 point release has been in developer and public beta since February 16, 2026. The update is now on beta 4, released March 9, 2026 with build number 23E5234a, which arrived with the complete new emoji designs and the final round of small refinements.
The release timeline is narrow. Geeky Gadgets' analysis of Apple's beta cycle places the release candidate around March 16, with a public launch projected for March 23. That projection is grounded in Apple's consistent release behavior: 9to5Mac's historical tracking shows iOS 18.4 launched March 31, iOS 17.4 on March 5, iOS 16.4 on March 27, and iOS 15.4 on March 14. Four years. Four March releases.
Beta 4's build number provides a secondary signal. The "a" suffix in a beta build number has historically indicated the final pre-release candidate build, a pattern Emojipedia's beta historians have documented across multiple iOS cycles.
Apple has not announced an official public release date; the March 23 window reflects historical patterns and build number analysis, not a confirmed schedule. What is confirmed: the update is substantially complete and in final preparation.
The broader iOS 26 context matters here. The operating system launched in September 2025 alongside Apple's Liquid Glass visual redesign, the most significant interface overhaul since iOS 7. Early releases were rough. iOS 26.1 through 26.3 progressively addressed stability issues and interface polish. iOS 26.4 is the first release in that cycle that adds a meaningful set of new capabilities rather than predominantly fixing what shipped before.
The flagship new Apple Music feature is Playlist Playground, a text-to-playlist generator powered by Apple Intelligence. The interaction is simple: open Apple Music, tap the "+" button to create a new playlist, and type a description instead of a name.
MacRumors' beta coverage documents that Apple provides preset suggestion prompts including "morning coffee music," "hip-hop party songs," and "disco songs that defined the 1970s," but users can write any description they choose. The feature generates a 25-song playlist with a custom title and allows further refinement through follow-up prompts, manual track adjustments, and cover art selection. Finished playlists can be shared on a user's Apple Music profile.
One friction point: Playlist Playground requires Apple Intelligence models to download in the background before it becomes available. It does not appear immediately after installing the update.
Whether Playlist Playground routes generation through Apple's on-device models, Private Cloud Compute, or a combination of both has not been confirmed by Apple.
Apple Music gains three additional improvements in this update. Full-screen artwork display arrives for albums and playlists. A Concerts Near You section surfaces local live show listings based on listening history. Users can now add a single song to multiple playlists in one step, ending the need to repeat the action for each playlist separately.
Apple Podcasts receives its most significant update in years through a new video experience built on HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) technology. HLS is a standard that automatically adjusts streaming quality based on available network speed, the same technology behind most major streaming services.
The practical result is a fluid switch between watching and listening to the same episode. Apple describes the goal in its Podcasts update notes, as reported by 9to5Mac's beta coverage, as allowing users to "switch seamlessly between watching and listening to shows." Video episodes can be downloaded for offline playback and support horizontal full-screen display.
The update arrives as YouTube and Spotify have both expanded their video podcast capabilities significantly. Apple is responding with a native quality level rather than requiring third-party apps to fill the gap.
iOS 26.4 brings ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Claude to CarPlay as voice-controlled assistants. The addition is more constrained than it might sound.
Developers must update their apps to include CarPlay support and obtain a specific entitlement from Apple before their assistants function in the car. Apple's CarPlay Developer Guide specifies that voice-based conversational apps must treat voice as their primary interface modality and must not attempt to control vehicle or iPhone functions. The assistants are available for voice queries only; they cannot perform the kind of on-device actions Siri is supposed to gain in a future update.
CarPlay also gains video playback support for parked vehicles through the Apple TV app and other compatible services. The parked-only restriction keeps the interface from being used while driving.
The Health app's Vitals daily overview graph now includes Blood Oxygen readings. The restoration has a longer backstory. MacRumors' coverage documents that Apple removed blood oxygen sensing from Apple Watch in early 2024 following a U.S. International Trade Commission import ban issued in response to patent claims from health technology company Masimo. Apple restored the capability in August 2025 by shifting the blood oxygen computation from the Apple Watch hardware to the paired iPhone, allowing the Watch to collect raw data while the phone performs the calculation. iOS 26.4 takes the next step, placing those readings back into the Vitals overview where they had been absent since the removal. Danaher has announced a $9.9 billion acquisition of Masimo that may eventually resolve the underlying patent dispute.
The Health app also gains an Average Bedtime metric that displays a two-week rolling average of the user's actual bedtime, distinct from the existing bedtime goal setting.
Stolen Device Protection, the security feature Apple introduced in iOS 17.3 to defend against a specific theft method where criminals observed victims entering their passcodes before taking the device, now activates automatically on update. Previously, users had to find and enable it in Settings. The feature requires biometric authentication (Face ID or Touch ID) for sensitive actions when the phone is away from trusted locations like home or work, and applies a second biometric check with a time delay for the most critical account changes. No user action beyond updating is needed for the protection to take effect.
The accessibility category gains a new "Reduce Bright Effects" setting (renamed from "Reduce Highlighting Effects" in beta 4) designed for users with light sensitivity. Apple's description reads that it "minimizes highlighting and flashing when interacting with onscreen elements, such as buttons or the keyboard."
Other additions in the update: the Camera app gains Audio Zoom, which focuses the iPhone's microphone on the subject when the camera zooms during video recording. Freeform adds a Creator Studio Content Hub with AI image generation. The App Store's Search bar returns to the top of the Search tab, reversing a layout change introduced in iOS 26.0. Reminders gets an "Urgent" smart list, and Shortcuts adds a "Set Battery Charge Limit" action for battery health management.
Playlist Playground requires Apple Intelligence models to download before it appears; CarPlay AI chatbot apps need developer entitlements before they function; Podcasts HLS runs on network-adaptive streaming that Apple controls end-to-end: three features, three bounded deployment environments, no reliance on Siri.
This distribution is not coincidental. Playlist Playground's surface area is constrained to a 25-song output in a music library. Podcasts HLS handles a predictable audio/video stream with defined quality tiers. CarPlay chatbot apps require developer involvement, a voice-only interface, and explicit restrictions on what the AI can touch. Each of these features delivers Apple Intelligence where the input space is controlled and the output is bounded. None requires Siri to interpret arbitrary intent, manage cross-app permissions, or execute actions across an entire operating system. The features that shipped are precisely the ones Apple's AI can handle reliably at scale. The features that didn't ship are precisely the ones Siri is still failing at in testing.
Apple announced the AI-powered Siri overhaul at WWDC 2024, promising iOS 18 delivery, and internal testing as recently as January 2026 still showed Siri failing to process queries reliably and taking too long to respond.
That gap, two years between announcement and a still-unshipped result, is longer than a typical polish delay. MacRumors, citing Bloomberg's Mark Gurman's reporting, documented that Siri doesn't always properly process queries and can take too long to respond to requests. Engineers were directed to use iOS 26.5 for further internal Siri testing, a clear signal that none of the overhaul's features were ready for iOS 26.4 at launch.
The reliability problems reflect a deeper issue with Apple's AI architecture. Apple's own internal models proved insufficient to compete with what Google, Anthropic, and others had built. The gap was significant enough that Apple took the unusual step of forming a multi-year partnership with Google. MacRumors, citing Bloomberg's Gurman's reporting, confirmed that Apple announced the Gemini-based model partnership in January 2026 and that John Giannandrea, the former Google AI head Apple hired to lead Siri in 2018, was removed from the Siri leadership role. Mike Rockwell, who previously led the Vision Pro program, took over Siri development and now reports to Craig Federighi.
Partnering with a third-party model provider is not a quick fix. Apple still plans to run elements of Siri on-device and through Private Cloud Compute, the same privacy-preserving framework that underlies existing Apple Intelligence features. Integrating an external model while maintaining that architecture requires substantially more engineering work than adjusting a feature inside an existing framework. MacObserver, citing Bloomberg's Gurman's reporting, recorded Craig Federighi's public framing of the constraint: "We think it's super important that when a model takes a question from you, that that data is kept private." Apple cannot simply point Siri at a Gemini API endpoint and ship it.
The two capabilities most affected are the ones that would make Siri most competitive. MacRumors, citing Bloomberg's Gurman's reporting, documented that Siri's delayed features center on personal data access across apps, the ability to search through messages, emails, and calendars to answer contextual questions, and voice-based control of in-app actions across third-party apps. These are the "agentic" capabilities that chatbot-era assistants are defined by. iOS 26.5 internal builds include "preview" toggles for the personalization feature, suggesting at least partial delivery may still arrive in May. The full chatbot-style Siri, with long-term memory and extended back-and-forth conversation, is now targeted for iOS 27, alongside the expected iPhone Fold launch in fall 2026.
Apple has not committed to a specific version number for the Siri overhaul, and the internal testing timeline, per MacRumors citing Bloomberg's Gurman, remains fluid. Apple confirmed to CNBC that the new Siri will arrive at some point in 2026. The company settled a class-action lawsuit from iPhone 16 buyers in December 2025 who felt misled by the gap between the WWDC 2024 announcement and actual delivery.
The pattern suggests that Apple may be treating iOS 27 less as a deadline and more as the first realistic ship window; Apple has not confirmed a specific timeline beyond its "2026" public commitment.
iOS 26.4 delivers the Unicode Consortium's Emoji 17.0 character set, which the Consortium approved in September 2025. Emojipedia's analysis of beta 4 documents 163 new emoji designs in total: 13 completely new concepts and 150 new skin tone sequence combinations for the existing People Wrestling and People With Bunny Ears emoji.
The 13 new concept emoji span a range of expressions and objects that have been absent from the standard keyboard despite obvious demand. The expressive additions include:
Distorted Face: wide eyes, blushing cheeks, a tense mouth, and raised eyebrows, intended to convey feeling overwhelmed
Fight Cloud: the cartoonish puff of chaos with stars, as seen in comic strips and animated films
Ballet Dancer: available with full skin tone support
Orca: the killer whale, also labeled in search as "killer whale"
Hairy Creature: explicitly inspired by Bigfoot-type cryptids from multiple global traditions, not a single cultural reference
Trombone
Landslide: depicted as rocks falling down a cliff face
Treasure Chest
The remaining five new concept emoji expand existing people categories. Apple Core is also part of the Unicode 17.0 standard but was not included in beta 4.
The emoji keyword search and keyboard support infrastructure was added in iOS 26.4 beta 3, build 23E5223f, released March 2, 2026. The actual visual designs appeared for the first time in beta 4 nine days later. Prior betas showed question mark placeholders in keyboard positions where the new characters would appear.
The designs finalized in beta 4 may still change before the public release; Apple adjusted emoji appearances in both iOS 15.4 and iOS 12.1 after their final betas. The Distorted Face in particular has minor rendering differences between Apple's current design and the Unicode reference image, and subtle refinements between now and the final build are plausible.
Apple has adopted new Unicode emoji in a spring x.4 release for four consecutive years. iOS 15.4, iOS 16.4, iOS 17.4, and iOS 18.4 each carried that year's Unicode emoji batch in March. iOS 26.4 continues the pattern with the Emoji 17.0 batch approved the previous September.
The beta question resolves to a simple calculation: the stable release is, at most, two weeks away. Entering a beta program for a two-week window before a public launch introduces risk with minimal time advantage.
Beta 4 is notable for what was removed from it, not only what was added. RCS end-to-end encryption, which was present in betas 1 through 3 as an experimental feature, was pulled from beta 4. Apple had already stated RCS encryption would not ship with iOS 26.4; removing it from the release candidate preparation build is consistent with cleaning up features that are not ready for the final build. Beta 4 also added support for the recently released iPhone 17e and M4 iPad Air, both of which are expected to ship before or alongside the public iOS 26.4 release.
We have not verified the beta's stability across all device configurations; users on older hardware or with complex accessibility setups should confirm compatibility before installing.
For users whose primary interest is the Siri overhaul: the stable release will not contain it. iOS 26.5, expected in May or June, may include an early version of Siri's personal data access features based on the preview toggles present in iOS 26.5 internal testing. The full chatbot-capable Siri, with the cross-app control and conversational memory that would make it competitive with standalone AI assistants, is targeted for iOS 27 alongside the expected iPhone Fold launch in fall 2026.
For users evaluating the update on its own merits: Stolen Device Protection default-on is the single most security-significant change for the average iPhone owner, and it requires no decision. It activates on update. Playlist Playground and CarPlay AI chatbot access require Apple Intelligence-capable hardware (iPhone 15 Pro or later, or any iPhone 16 model) and a compatible Apple Intelligence language setting. Users on iPhone 14 or earlier will receive the Blood Oxygen Health upgrade, the Podcasts video experience, the accessibility improvements, and the new emoji, with no Apple Intelligence features available.
Beta 4's build number ends in "a", a suffix that Emojipedia's beta historians note consistently appears in the final pre-RC build, and Geeky Gadgets' analysis of Apple's weekly release schedule places the RC on March 16, with public release projected for March 23. Add those signals together alongside the RCS encryption removal and the device support additions, and the picture that emerges is an update that has stopped gaining features and started finalizing for release. The stable build is almost certainly days away.
The practical advice is straightforward. Install the beta only if testing Playlist Playground or CarPlay AI access before general availability has specific value. Wait for stable if you use your iPhone for anything critical and prefer not to risk a beta-specific bug for a two-week window. And if the Siri overhaul is what you were waiting for, both this update and the next one are stepping stones; iOS 27 is the destination.