Everything new in iOS 17.4 beta 4

So far, iOS 17.4 has focused on getting iOS ready for EU regulation thanks to the Digital Markets Act. Other updates include new emoji and automatic podcast transcriptions.

The fourth iOS 17.4 beta has a few small updates and changes to the battery health monitoring menu. Apple also removed references to homeOS.

Updated battery health menu

If you visit the battery settings in iOS 17.4 beta 4, it has a new sub-menu for Battery Health. Instead of showing a percentage, which could be ambiguous to some users, it states the battery's condition, i.e., "Normal."

Tapping into this menu reveals detailed battery health information like maximum capacity percentage and cycle count. Previously, cycle count was only visible in the device's About menu.

The cycle count and new Battery Health menu appear to be exclusive to iPhone 15 models.

Interestingly, this update coincides with the news from Apple that iPhone battery health for iPhone 15 has been improved. It now cites that it takes 1,000 cycles to reach the 80% capacity mark — it was previously 500.

New CarPlay instrument cluster info

Customers with compatible vehicles can view specific information from CarPlay in the instrument cluster. Specifically, with this update, upcoming maneuvers can be shown in the instrument cluster.

From Apple's release notes:

In iOS 17.4, with supported CarPlay vehicles, Apple Maps will present a new instrument cluster experience with information about upcoming maneuvers. Users can swap the desired display type between the main and instrument cluster screen by tapping the map configuration button on the upper right of the Maps main screen.

The update to CarPlay is specific to the existing system, and models with certain kinds of dash-connected smart car systems should be able to take advantage. It is not related to the futuristic CarPlay Apple announced in 2022.

Everything else

There are a handful of smaller changes to iOS 17.4 in beta 4. They're mostly language changes in alerts or portions of code only seen by developers.

Code sleuth Steve Moser discovered these changes and posted them to X.

• Third-party marketplaces: Developers can have multiple marketplaces, users can set default marketplaces for Spotlight and Siri, and deleting marketplaces removes all apps from that marketplace
• Battery settings: mentions of how software and hardware systems help counter performance impacts as batteries age
• Video reactions: now off by default in certain cases, likely set by the developer with the option for the user to turn them back on
• Spatial Video capture: detailed information provided about capture, including that 3D video takes up about twice the space as 2D
• Apple Wallet: new permissions for providing anonymized transaction data to Apple
• Apple Podcasts: the now playing bar now floats similar to visionOS UI — thanks Stephen Robles

Since the EU's Digital Markets Act goes into effect in March, iOS 17.4 is expected to be released before then. The next beta cycle could be the release candidate before the final release.