![\"Apple](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/apple-music-ipados26.4.jpg\")
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Apple today released iOS 26.4 Beta 1 for developers alongside similar betas for the iPad, Mac, and other products. This comes just five days after the company issued iOS 26.3 and the other \u201826.3 releases publicly<\/a>.<\/p>\n There are no release notes per se, but according to Macworld<\/a>, 9to5Mac<\/a>, and some other third party reports, this first developer beta includes:<\/p>\n Apple Podcasts improvements. Per the news earlier today<\/a>, Apple Podcasts now includes support for advanced video podcast capabilities in the form of HLS technology.<\/p>\n Apple Music improvements. Apple Music provides a new full-screen artwork experience for select albums and playlists that \u201cbrings your music to life,\u201d nearby concert information, a Playlist Playground that lets you create playlists based on text descriptions or preselected prompts, and a redesigned Profile screen (which also appears in the App Store, Apple Podcasts, and Apple TV).<\/p>\n Messages improvements. The Messages app now supports encrypted RCS messaging, though only between iPhones in this initial release.<\/p>\n Wallpaper Gallery improvements. The Wallpaper Gallery is redesigned with a cleaner, more organized user interface.<\/p>\n Reminders improvements. Reminders gets a new Smart List and automatic alarms for urgent tasks.<\/p>\n Ambient Music widget for the Home screen. This new widget lets you quickly access the odd ambient music feature Apple added to Control Center (which requires an Apple Music subscription).<\/p>\n Stolen Device Protection improvements. This feature is now enabled by default.<\/p>\n App Store improvements. The search bar has been moved back to the top of the Search view.<\/p>\n Safari improvements. On the iPad, the compact tab bar is back.<\/p>\n There\u2019s more, obviously. But just as obviously, this release doesn\u2019t have any hint of the conversational Siri feature that was supposed to debut in this release<\/a> after Apple revealed that it was partnering with Google to use Gemini<\/a>. A more recent report suggests that\u2019s been delayed yet again<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apple today released iOS 26.4 Beta 1 for developers alongside similar betas for the iPad, Mac, and other…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[7083,57398,160027,2306,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-439477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-ios-26","tag-ipados-26","tag-macos-26-tahoe","tag-mobile","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}