iOS 16.4 Released With New Emojis and Great Web App Speed

iOS 16.4 features. While there has been a lot of talk about iOS 17 today, Apple hasn’t finished the iOS 16 update yet. iOS 16.4 is already available for download.

The fourth major update for iOS 16 is headlined by the addition of 21 new emoji symbols, which Apple says includes new animals, hand gestures, and objects.

Apple also adds notifications for web apps saved on the home screen, so you’ll know if there’s a new update on the page you’ve added as an icon.

There are more powerful tools for detecting duplicate photos in iCloud Photo Shared Libraries, and Apple is also beefing up voice isolation when making calls from an iPhone. This isolates your voice and blocks out the noise around you.

Crash detection is being optimized for the iPhone 14 series (hopefully fewer false positives in the future) and new accessibility settings include VoiceOver support for maps in the Weather app. Apple has also added a setting that dims the display when lights flash in a video.

“This update adds Dim Flashing Lights, an accessibility option to automatically dim video display when flashing lights or stroboscopic effects are detected, and includes performance and stability improvements,” the release notes say.

But we’re sure you’re interested in hearing about these emojis, right?

The beta version last month featured a blurry trembling face, a pushing hand gesture (for left and right hands), and new blue, gray, and pink hearts. As for the new living creatures, they were elk, donkey, thrush, goose and jellyfish.

There was also a beautiful hyacinth flower, an angel’s wing, a piece of ginger root, and peas in a pod. There was a fan, a hairpin, maracas and a flute. There were also Wi-Fi-like emoji and the Khand symbol.

It’s not clear if this has all worked out yet, but we’ll be diving into iOS 16.4 once it’s downloaded and installed to find out.

The update is big. It takes up 1.87GB of space on my iPhone 12 Pro Max, so you need to make sure you can download it over Wi-Fi and you have enough battery. You’ll find the update under Settings > General > Software Update.