Apple’s iOS 15.4 update for iPhone is coming soon, and it has some cool features you won’t want to miss. The software is still in its testing phase, but you can upgrade to beta now if you don’t want to wait for a stable release to try out all the features.
iOS 15.4 is available to developers on January 27, 2022 and to public beta testers on January 28. Since then, we have discovered many new features and updates for iPhone in the US and continue to discover more. as the beta progresses. If you’d like to try out what’s new right now, you can join the Apple Beta Software Program. If not, you can use the feature list below until iOS 15.4 is released to everyone.
As of February 22, 2022, Apple is running iOS 15.4 beta 4.
Over 100 new emojis
The last big emoji update for the iPhone was almost ten months ago in iOS 14.5, but the new emoji were available in the Unicode 14.0 standard even before Apple released iOS 15.0. Apple is finally bringing the missing emoji to life in iOS 15.4. There are 37 new characters in total – 112 if you count all skin tones – and they’re also coming to iPadOS 15.4 and macOS 12.3.
Highlights include “Melting Face”, “Welcoming Face”, “Face Holding Back Tears”, “Lip Biter”, “Pregnant Man”, “Pregnant Woman”, “Man with Crown”, “Troll”, “Coral”, “Lotus, Empty Nest, Nest with Eggs, Low Battery, Bubbles, and various hand gestures, including a handshake emoji picker that allows you to select different combinations of skin tones. Head over to our new iOS 15.4 emoji guide to see all the emoji and skin tone options.
Apple has also updated its Face with Hand Over Mouth emoji with a smile, smiling eyes, and flushed cheeks, which is more in line with how other platforms have used it. The old design was changed to “Face with open eyes”and “Hand over mouth”, which was added in Unicode 14.0 for all platforms.
Image by Justin Meyers/Gadget Hacks
Use Face ID with a mask
Apple previously added mask-related updates in iOS 13.5 and iOS 14.5 to make it easier to unlock iPhone while wearing a face covering, but they pale in comparison to iOS 15.4’s new “Use Face ID with Mask”feature for iPhone 12 and later. means you don’t need to enter passcodes or have an Apple Watch.
The new Face ID mode hone in on the unique features around your eyes as the mask hides the rest of your face. It’s less secure than a full-length face scan, but about a thousand times more convenient, especially since it also works with Apple Pay and third-party app logins.
In my experience, this works very well when unlocking your iPhone, but can be a bit buggy during the installation process. Newer betas have added a “Look down to unlock”message on the screen to let you know that you need to see better around your eyes for authentication. Read our full guide to the new “Using Face ID with a Mask”feature in iOS 15.4 to learn more.
Images by Daniel Hipskind/Gadget Hacks
iCloud Keychain Notes
If you prefer iCloud Keychain over LastPass or another third-party password manager, iOS 15.4 has finally added notes to password entries. You can’t add notes the first time you enter your password, but once it’s in your iCloud Keychain list, you can click Add Notes to write down something about the website or account.
iCloud Keychain Security Best Practices
Apple includes security guidelines for iCloud Keychain that encourage you to change your password when it’s at risk of being compromised. Some of these situations involve easy-to-guess passwords, passwords that come from data breaches, reusable passwords, and passwords that contain common words.
If you don’t want to change your password, iOS 15.4 lets you hide these recommendations on a per-site basis. Just click the X next to the security advisory and click Hide. You can view all the “Security Recommendations”hidden in the settings, as well as reset them all.
Add custom email domains
Apple added custom email domain support for iCloud Mail in iOS 15, but you could only add your domains through iCloud.com. iOS 15.4 has an easier way that allows you to add domains from your iCloud settings. Tap your Apple ID at the top of Settings, then go to iCloud -> iCloud Mail -> Custom Email Domain to get started.
Like all beta features, work on it continues. I was able to remove the custom domain from the options, but I couldn’t add it even though I’m an iCloud+ subscriber.
iCloud mail menu in settings
To make room for custom email domains, as shown above, Apple moved the Mail menu in iCloud settings from the very bottom to where the iCloud Mail toggle used to be. The toggle now appears inside the menu, including everything from the old Mail menu. Go to Settings -> [Your Apple ID] -> iCloud -> iCloud Mail to check it out.
New Gender-Neutral American Siri Voice
Siri has a new gender-neutral American voice that you can set for Assistant. We last got new Siri voices in iOS 14.5, so it’s nice to have another option. Go to Settings -> Siri & Search -> Siri Voice, then select American. You will now see five options under the Voice heading instead of four.
Notify on startup in shortcut automation
Shortcuts are great for automating tasks, but they contain a lot of unnecessary notifications that can visually interfere with your work. While iOS 15.4 doesn’t fix all label notification issues, it does address some automations (not to be confused with regular labels).
Now, instead of seeing the Start Your Automation warning, you won’t see anything that makes automation more of a background process that you would like it to be. The setting is related to automation, so you can save alerts with any automation you want. Check out our full article on Notification Blocking “Start Your Automation”for automation to see how it all works.
Before and after. Note that it does not remove Click to Reply alerts. Images by Justin Meyers/Gadget Hacks
next display options
If you save TV shows and movies in the Up Next section of the Apple TV app, you may have noticed that it shows posters for all unplayed shows and still footage from where you left unfinished titles. If you don’t like those still frames, you can go to Settings -> TV -> Next Display, new menu, and select Poster instead of Frame.
Still frames (left) and poster (right) for unfinished games.
sorting filters in podcasts
The Podcasts app is getting a small but important update in iOS 15.4 that brings podcast sorting capabilities. If a podcast has multiple seasons, whether you have them in your library or not, you’ll see a season selector to select the one you want. You can then filter the seasons for the podcasts in your library by all episodes, unplayed, downloaded, saved, and played.
Improved camera selection with magnifier
When you have a “Camera”control added to the interface of the “Magnifier”application, when you click on it, you can choose between “Front”and “Rear”cameras. Tapping it now automatically switches the camera on iPhone models without telephoto or macro lenses.
If your iPhone has more cameras, tap them to select Auto, Close-up, and Front. Auto mode works with wide and telephoto lenses, Close-up mode uses the macro capabilities of the ultra-wide camera, and Front mode uses the selfie camera. The Auto icon is a regular camera, the Close-up icon is a flower (it used to be a leaf), and the Front icon is a camera with arrows running one after another in a circle (it used to be a profile icon).
Warning message during AirTag installation
On February 10, 2022, Apple released a statement that AirTags are being misused by attackers to track and stalk people instead of personal items. In it, Apple announced several upcoming software updates to prevent malicious and criminal use of AirTags, and iOS 15.4 appears to be one of those updates.
Now, the first time you set up an AirTag in the Find My app, you’ll see a different message after you name it. Instead of just saying that the AirTag will be registered to your Apple ID, it says:
AirTag is solely for tracking items that belong to you.
Using AirTag to track people without their consent is a crime in many parts of the world.
AirTag is designed to be discovered by victims and allows law enforcement to request identifying information about the owner.
Updated “Me”tab in Find My
Prior to iOS 15.4, the Me tab in the Find My app had a toggle for Item Safety Alerts. Turning it off would disable it and prompt the user “The owner of the unknown item will be able to see your location and you will no longer receive notifications when an unknown item is detected moving with you.”
This toggle is missing in iOS 15.4 and has been replaced with “Set up search notifications”and “Set up tracking notifications”links. In the first case, you will go to Settings -> Notifications -> Latitude, and in the second case, you will go to the new menu item Settings -> Notifications -> Tracking Notifications.
The Find My Me tab in iOS 15.3.1 (left) and iOS 15.4 (right).
custom tracking notifications for Find My
Expanding on the feature above, you can now control what used to be the Item Security Alerts toggle in Find My. You can access the setting from the Me tab in Find My or via Settings -> Notifications -> Tracking Notifications. However, whenever you change anything in tracking notifications, the alert does not appear, as it did when you turned off the “Item safety alerts”toggle prior to iOS 15.4. This may change in future updates.
Apple Card Widget
If you have an Apple Card, iOS 15.4 provides a widget to quickly view your balance, available credit, and spending activity. You can add it to the Today screen or the Home screen.
Click to pay
If you sell products, Tap to Pay in iOS 15.4 makes it much easier to accept more types of payments. In the past, you had to rely on third-party accessories to accept debit and credit card payments on your iPhone. Now anyone with an iPhone X or later registered with the Apple Business Register can accept card payments in person without any accessories.
What’s more, it can also accept personal payments made with Apple Pay and other NFC-compatible digital wallets such as Google Pay and Samsung Pay. A third party payment processing provider is needed, such as Stripe or Shopify, so Tap to Pay is a behind-the-scenes feature until one of those providers adds support.
web application push notifications
The “experimental”advanced features of Safari for iOS 15.4 have an “Embedded Web Notifications”toggle that is disabled by default. When this feature is enabled, Progressive Web Apps can show you notifications, which you can choose to allow or block, in the Action Center, similar to how they work in Safari on macOS. Perhaps soon this feature will appear in the standard Safari settings, but it is not yet fully implemented in the beta version.
Improved DualSense controller support
The available code snippet, GCDualSenseAdaptiveTrigger, gives game developers the ability to use the Sony Adaptive Trigger Firmware Update for the PlayStation 5 DualSense Wireless Controller. This means that overall the game gets better when using the DualSense Controller with some games on the Sony Remote Play.
Activate SharePlay from the share list
Any app can tap into the SharePlay API if it wants to offer one of the hottest features of iOS 15, and iOS 15.4 gives developers another way to enable SharePlay – the ability to launch SharePlay from your iPhone’s share list. It can take a while for all your favorite apps to become popular, so don’t be surprised if you don’t see them right away.
Sign in to Passkey apps on Mac and iPad
Apple’s updates to iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and macOS Monterey include a new iCloud Keychain passcode feature that lets you sign up and sign in to mobile and web apps with Face ID or Touch ID. You don’t have to worry about passwords as your device creates and stores unique private/public key credentials for each account.
With iOS 15.4, you can now sign in to your Mac and iPad by authenticating on your iPhone with biometric identification. For example, this is useful when you create an account with Face ID on your iPhone and want to sign into an app on your Mac or iPad that doesn’t have Face ID.
Built-in Wi-Fi support for HomePod
When connected to some Wi-Fi networks, a login screen may appear to accept the terms or log in with a username and password. Captive portals are common in hotel rooms, airports, dorm rooms, cafes, schools, and other public or common places, but there’s a big problem with them: HomePod can’t connect to them. At least until iOS 15.4. With the new firmware, your HomePod will move the Authorized Portal login page to your iPhone so you can complete the connection.
software updates via mobile data
Many users have reported seeing “Use Cellular Data to Download”or “Use Mobile Data to Download”prompts when first updating to iOS 15.4 via the Software Update page. We’ve seen this before for 4G/LTE and 5G networks, but it looks like the invitation is now showing up in more regions for both.
The options we’ve seen include “Download via mobile “, “Download via mobile network “, and “Download via Wi-Fi “. The support page , which was last updated in December 2021 on Apple’s website, states “To improve your download speed, avoid downloading other content and use a Wi-Fi network if you can,”implying that cellular networks are fair game..
It may not be new to everyone, but more and more people are seeing an opportunity for it.
View SOS settings emergency alert
When you open “Settings”in iOS 15.4, you may see an alert at the top “View emergency SOS call settings”. This way you will learn how to use the emergency feature and it will give you the ability to add emergency contacts and check available alternative triggers. It’s not known why Apple is showing a warning in settings, but it’s something every iPhone owner should check anyway.
Weekly average for schedule summary
If you visit the “Schedule Summary”option in Notification Settings on iOS 15.3 and below, you’ll see “Average Daily Notification”. the Applications tab in the summary. In iOS 15.4 it’s now “Average Weekly Notification”.
bug fixes
- We fixed an issue resulting in third-party apps not displaying all animations at up to 120Hz on iPhone 13 models with ProMotion displays. Developers can use the UIView or UIViewPropertyAnimator block APIs to create animations.
- Fixes an issue that caused your iPhone to upload Siri and dictation recordings to Apple’s servers even if you opted out of sharing recordings and voice interactions to improve features. The previous iOS update turned off sharing for all affected devices, but iOS 15.4 displays the “Improve Siri & Dictation”setup screen again during the installation process.
Universal Control (iPad, Mac)
While not a feature of iOS 15.4, iPadOS 15.4 and macOS 12.3 have something called Universal Control. This feature allows you to use the same keyboard, mouse, and trackpad with your iPad and Mac. For example, you can move the cursor on your Mac to your iPad, use your Mac keyboard to enter text on your iPad, or drag and drop content from one device to another. To make it work you need:
- iPadOS 15.4 and macOS 12.3
- All devices signed into the same iCloud account
- Two-factor authentication enabled for iCloud
- Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Handoff enabled on all devices
- Your devices are within 30 feet (10 meters) of each other
Unfortunately, Universal Control doesn’t work from iPad to iPad, iPhone, or Apple Pencil. Third-party keyboards and mice are supported on the iPhone, so maybe one day we’ll see Universal Control. Although I wouldn’t bet that it will happen anytime soon.
Turn off iCloud access (removed)
The first beta of iOS 15.4 has a new feature in the Password & Security settings for iCloud that allows you to disable access to iCloud on the web, which means you won’t be able to access your account through iCloud.com. It will protect all your iCloud data including email, calendar, contacts, photos, notes, reminders and files. However, it will still work with Find My if you lose your iPhone.
Apple removed the “Share iCloud Data Online”toggle in later betas, but we may see it again as the feature depends on a server-side update; Without a server-side update, including it in the beta was pointless, as it didn’t work on its own.