Apple Drops iOS 26.4 RC with New Emoji, AI Playlists, and a Major Keyboard Fix
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Apple has just pushed out the Release Candidates of its latest batch of operating system updates, including iOS 26.4, iPadOS 26.4, and macOS 26.4. While these “RC builds” rarely add any new features — most of those were locked down by the time beta 3 landed a couple of weeks ago — they typically give us a peek at Apple’s actual release notes, and the latest batch are no exceptions.
As you’re probably aware by now, iOS 26.4 will not be bringing the promised “Siri 2.0” improvements, as they aren’t quite ready for prime time yet. The other big feature that showed up in the iOS 26.4 betas, RCS encryption, also won’t be coming just yet. Apple had made it clear from the start that it merely turned the feature on for testing, and that it “is not shipping in this release.”
Instead, the new iPhone, iPad, and Mac updates are mostly about doing a bit of housekeeping and adding a few smaller features, but that’s not to say we aren’t seeing some welcome changes. Here’s what’s coming.
New Emoji
As we’ve seen the past “.4” releases, the OS 26.4 updates are adding the new emoji we’ve been hearing about for the past couple of years. The Unicode Consortium’s Emoji Working Group, which is responsible for defining these characters to ensure they work across all platforms, published the first proposal in late 2024, and ratified it last September, as per its usual schedule. However, that just defines the spec; Apple’s design teams still need to create the necessary glyphs, which takes time.
While the list originally included nine unique new emoji — Apple Core, Ballet Dancer, Distorted Face, Fight Cloud, Hairy Creature, Landslide, Orca, Trombone, and Treasure Chest — the apple core was pulled from the spec in early 2025 and never made it back in, leaving us with the remaining eight unique emojis. There are 150 more in the OS 26.4 updates, but those are combinations of the three genders and five skin tone variations for the existing People With Bunny Ears and People Wrestling emoji.
Apple Music: AI Playlists, Concerts + More
With Siri improvements and RCS encryption pushed back, the most significant user-facing changes in the new releases are focusing on Apple Music.
At the top of the list is Playlist Playground, an Apple Intelligence feature that will let you build AI-generated playlists from a generative prompt. It still carries a “beta” tag, which is Apple’s way of saying it may not always produce the results you expect, and it also appears to be limited to US English for now.
Music Recognition in Control Center — Apple’s built-in version of Shazam — can now be used when offline. Apple says it “identifies songs without an internet connection and delivers results automatically when you’re back online.”
A new Concerts section will help “discover nearby shows from artists in your library and recommends new artists based on what you listen to.” Apple is also enhancing the Ambient Music feature from last year’s iOS 18.4 update with a new widget to provide easier access to the selection of curated playlists for Sleep, Chill, Productivity, and Wellbeing. Lastly, albums can now show full-screen backgrounds for a more immersive look on album and playlist pages.
Independent Payment Methods for Family Sharing Members
One significant change that we hadn’t heard anything about before today’s release notes is Apple’s decision to loosen the reins on Family Sharing.
Since its inception, Family Sharing has required that everyone bill their purchases to a single payment method — whichever credit card or debit card the Family Organizer has set up. The only workaround was to either turn off purchase sharing entirely, or have other family members purchase gift cards, which took priority for purchases. However, anything exceeding the available credit would still go to the shared payment method.
This was arguably a convenient way to discourage sharing with folks who weren’t at least close enough to be “like family.” After all, you might have no problem letting your buddy at work use your Netflix password, but you’re much less likely to add them to a sharing group that lets them charge App Store purchases to your credit card.
It looks like Apple may now be loosening this up, as per this line in the release notes:
Purchase Sharing lets adult members in Family Sharing groups use their own payment method when making purchases, without relying on the family organizer.
Apple has also already updated its Support Document on how this works, adding “or other adult family members use their own payment method to make purchases” as an exception to the family organizer paying for their purchases.
Other Changes
Apple’s release notes list several other smaller changes, including some user interface improvements that fall into the Accessibility category, and updates to Freeform, and a tweak to Reminders.
- Reduce bright effects setting minimizes bright flashes when tapping on elements like buttons
- Subtitle and caption settings are available from the captions icon while viewing media, making them easier to find, customize, and preview
- Reduce Motion setting more reliably reduces the animations of Liquid Glass for users sensitive to on screen motion
- Freeform gains advanced image creation and editing tools, and a premium content library, joining Apple Creator Studio
- Mark reminders as urgent from the Quick Toolbar or by touching and holding, and filter for urgent reminders in your Smart Lists
- Compact tab bar option in Safari gives you more space to browse and lets you search directly from the active tab (iPadOS 26.4)
- Open window indicator appears when you switch to an app with hidden or minimized windows (iPadOS 26.4)
What could be the most significant fix is buried in a note at the bottom of the release notes: “Improved keyboard accuracy when typing quickly.” This suggests that iOS 26.4 will finally resolve some of the complaints folks have had about the keyboard since the first release of iOS 26. We’ll have to wait and see how that plays out, but it’s the first sign that Apple has addressed this in any way, so it’s at least promising.
The macOS 26.4 Tahoe release notes are considerably more sparse, listing nothing specific beyond the new emoji. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some changes coming to your Mac. The new charge limit feature discovered in the macOS 26.4 betas still appears to be here, as is the compact tab bar option in Safari. Legacy Intel-only apps are also being put on notice that you’ll need to find replacements by the time macOS 28 comes along.
Apple’s release notes are also silent on support for voice-based conversational apps in CarPlay, which will presumably open the door to using ChatGPT and Gemini on the road. However, there’s no reason to believe this isn’t there, as Apple still explicitly lists it as an iOS 26.4 feature in its CarPlay Developer Guide, but it’s up to third-party developers to take advantage of it, so it’s not a feature end users can take advantage of today. We’ll have to wait and see whether Google or OpenAI win the race to the dashboard.
