iOS 16.4 now available with 21 new emoji, notifications for web apps, new Voice Isolation feature for cellular calls, and more

Apple has released iOS 16.4, introducing 21 new emoji including new animals, hand gestures, objects, and more, support for notifications on web apps added to the Home Screen, Voice Isolation for cellular calls, Crash Detection optimizations on iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro models, and more.

iOS 16.4 is the latest major update to Apple’s iOS 16 operating system, bringing enhancements, bug fixes, and security updates to iPhone.

Available now, iOS 16.4 introduces over 20 new emoji characters including a new shaking face, a donkey, moose, and more. The new emoji update also brings a much-requested plain pink heart, one new smiley face, three new colored heart emojis, and two new hand gestures, each with support for different skin tones.

Voice Isolation — a new feature launched with iOS 16.4 — allows users to prioritize their voice during cellular calls on iPhone and block out ambient noise. With Voice Isolation enabled, the feature will filter out sounds around the user to allow their voice to be heard more clearly during a call, improving the microphone quality during calls when the background environment is loud.

Image: Apple

iOS 16.4 introduces support for web app push notifications, giving websites the ability to send notifications to users, regardless of if the website has an app on the App Store or not. To receive notifications from a website, users must first add the website to the Home Screen.

In addition to Crash Detection optimizations on iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro models, iOS 16.4 fixes an issue where Ask to Buy requests from children may fail to appear on the parent’s device, addresses issues where Matter-compatible thermostats could become unresponsive when paired to Apple Home, and adds VoiceOver support for maps in the Weather app.

Other notable new features in iOS 16.4 include updates to the Photos app to detect duplicate photos and videos in an iCloud Shared Photo Library, offering users the option to delete unwanted double-ups, and a tweak to the Accessibility setting to automatically dim video when flashes of light or strobe effects are detected.