Apple just released the first beta of iOS 17.4, and this is a massive update. Apple has just released the first developer beta of iOS 17.4. This is an unusually packed update full of new features, big changes for EU users, and even some leaks on unreleased Apple products. I’m going to break down everything that is new in this update, so join me as I grab my iPhone updated with a new beta, and I’ll unpack these new features. Let’s go ahead and dive into it here. We are on my iPhone in my case on a 15 Pro Max; it weighed in at 6.42 gigs, though your mileage may vary depending on the device that you’re actually running it on. Checking out the iOS version specifically, we are running 21E 5184. As a bit of a reminder, we will get closer and closer to a as we approach release. The lower down the alphabet, the less stable it is, so the closer to a, the more stable that release is. We should see that build number increasing as we get closer to the release of iOS 17.4, starting out with a fun one.
When things like gender and skin tone are taken into consideration, iOS 17.4 is adding over a hundred new emojis. There are several new like character ones to look at, some of my favorites include the new Phoenix, a new lime, head shaking emojis, and a brown mushroom, so there is a ton to go through here. Check out Emojipedia, they put together a great list of all the new emoji that are launching in this update. I know this isn’t the most groundbreaking of updates here, the new Emoji, but it’s always nice when Apple supports the latest characters coming in from Unicode. If we open the music app down here, at the bottom, there’s a new home button, so the home option there on the left has changed. Here’s what it looked like before in iOS 17.3, and earlier previously, it actually said like listen now instead of home, so I think that makes a little bit more sense. Listen, now was a little confusing.
I think home just makes more sense. If we open the podcast application here at the bottom, there’s a new option. It looks like the lyric option from Apple Music, but it actually will transcribe every episode of a podcast for you, so you can see we’re starting here. let’s turn the volume down on this so I can play it but it’ll be able to sync up the words with the transcription on the screen and what’s even nicer is you can like search through this if you’re looking for anything specific you can search through a show note so really cool to be able to transcribe every podcast episode give you option to read it copy out that text I love this huge new feature coming to podcast with 17.4 if if you need some suggestions for podcast homid Insider that I hear is a great one covers all the Smart Home Tech that is out there now and gives you a bunch of T tips and tricks uh there’s Apple Insider daily which is like a a daily podcast covering the news for the day or just the Apple Insider podcast which is weekly I’m not on that one as much but it still has a bunch of great content for you so um you should check those out and try the new podcast app out with it Siri has had the ability to respond to messages for the longest time here, and it was able to read those messages back to you now.
There’s this new option to add multiple languages, so I can have, uh, you’ll be
sending in multiple ones, and then when they come back, it’ll be able to read them in different languages, so you can add multiple languages here, which is really cool for any multilingual users.
This will be super handy because Siri will be able to identify and respond with the appropriate language in your messages in terms of privacy and security.
apple has a new option for contactless and n FC right now there is nothing in here of course and apple doesn’t even seem to have had an icon added yet for this so this is still working but yeah new privacy option for contactless and NFC added to settings if we then venture to face ID and passcode within settings and scroll down to the Recently Added stolen device protection this has been rearranged a little bit so now it actually goes into a sub men instead of just the turn off that was there before when you tap into this there’s a toggle still for stolen device protection then you can have it changed to always or away from familiar locations so you can leave this on all the time now even if you’re at home or when you’re away from familiar locations so now people have an option how secure they want to be with this all the time or just away from places like home and work inside of General then about there’s a new Option at the bottom for region we’ll talk about this in just a moment you’ll understand why this is being added but this is all still very early in the beta process just as identifiable region and unknown at the moment this will surely be updating to show places like the EU versus the US, so let’s go ahead and we’ll talk about that in a second. Also, there are new changes coming to CarPlay. CarPlay 2.0 is basically officially launching, it seems, with 17.4, so you’ll need a car that actually supports it, but we have seen a bunch of new CarPlay icons included here, and there’s like a good buy script written on screen similar to Apple’s like hello or welcome screen on the Mac now there.
will be a goodbye screen kind of scripting off on the center console of your car so very cool I cannot wait to see more car support this new version of carplay of course the biggest change here that people are going to want to talk about and I will talk about in another dedicated video is side loading coming to the European Union at apple is basically complying with a new law that has gone into place inside of the EU so for EU iPhone users they will now be able to install apps from thirdparty App Stores now there’s a whole lot of nuance here there’s discussion on on fees and distribution models and how all of that is getting figured out it’s it’s a bunch and I will talk about it all in another video but apple is laying the groundwork for that with 17.4 when 17.4 launches third party app stores will basically be allowed be live in the EU unfortunately it’s not coming else anywhere but the EU though other changes for the EU include the ability to set third-party browsers as the default browser on iPhone and Apple will allow thirdparty browser engines aside from webkit right now all browsers on iPhone are essentially just Safari with a different skin they’re all running webkit at the core now we’re going to have third party engines besides webkit running third party browsers the last change for EU users.
is the opening up of NFC and contactless payments so you’ll be able to use NFC with other contactless Payment Systems besides just Apple pay so we’re going to see a bunch more of that and as I mentioned earlier in the video that’s probably why we’re seeing things like the region inside our settings and that privacy option for contactless and NFC showing up in the Privacy section new features aside there’s also a few major leaks in of iOS 17.4 there are two unreleased products that Apple has accidentally made reference to in the public facing code the first is a next generation iPad Pro that will adopt a camera when in landscape mode so right now as you know the camera on iPads is at the top we saw this with like the 10th generation iPad
