iOS 10 Developer Beta 4 Released with 100+ New Emoji, Bug Fixes, and More

We got our first real preview of iOS 10 this past June at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference. With a ton of new features, including revamped Music, Photos, and News apps, several new features in the Messages app, major upgrades for Siri and lots of new functionality, iOS 10 is, according to Apple’s senior VP of software engineering Craig Federighi, possibly the biggest iOS release ever for users.

While the WWDC presentation did a wonderful job of outlining some of the more important revisions in the OS, beta versions have been the only way to get a hands-on glimpse of iOS 10. This morning, Apple released the fourth beta of iOS 10 to developers.

iOS 10 beta 4 is now available for developers, coming only two weeks after Apple issued the third iOS 10 beta. Previous betas slowly began leaking out the host of new features in iOS 10 – the second iOS 10 beta saw the Messages App Store go live, plus the addition of several 3D Touch shortcuts, while the third iOS 10 beta included new Taptic Engine behavior as well as changes to the Health and Activity apps. And while the release notes for the most recent beta only claim “bug fixes and improvements”, several new features are slowly being unearthed by developers.

The splash page for the Control Center has been updated to explain its expanded controls, and several wallpapers have been replaced with wallpapers from iOS 8. Folder animations have been sped up, and the Notification Center now displays a current date widget. The app icons in the Home app have also been changed, and the keyboard sounds have been slightly tweaked.

Finally, Apple has added over 100 new emoji, many of which depict female characters such as a cyclist, swimmer, police officer, construction worker, and more that were previously only available as male characters. Several new diversity options are also available, and the pistol emoji has been replaced with a water gun.

Today’s iOS beta release comes simultaneously with new beta versions of macOS, tvOS, and watchOS. iOS 10 beta 4 will likely be one of the last beta versions of iOS 10 before the official release, which is expected to take place alongside the release of the iPhone 7 early next month. A new public beta version of iOS 10 is expected to release in the next couple of days.