iOS 26.4 update could bring 8 new emojis and other changes to your iPhone
Before rolling out new features and improvements to the public, Apple regularly releases beta updates for developers and public beta testers, giving them an early look at upcoming iOS changes for iPhones. Released a couple of days back, the iOS 26.4 Beta 4 update’s major highlight revolves around the addition of several new emojis, among other subtle changes. On that note, let’s quickly take a look at the new additions in the latest iOS update, which should eventually roll out to everyone through the stable channel in future.
8 brand new emojis
Announced back in July 2025 on World Emoji Day, the Unicode Consortium, a non-profit organisation responsible for managing and adding emojis to multiple operating systems, unveiled eight emojis as part of its Unicode 17.0 release. With Apple always being at the forefront of being among the first companies to add newly announced emojis to its devices, these emojis make their debut on commercially available devices for the first time. The list of emojis added to iOS 26.4 beta 4 update is as follows;
Show Full Article
- Apple Core
- Ballet Dancers
- Distorted Face
- Fight Cloud
- Hairy Creature
- Orca
- Trombone
- Treasure Chest
Apart from that, as per MacRumors, the ‘people wrestling’ and ‘dancers with bunny ears’ emojis gain skin tone modifications like many other people-related emojis, while a gender neutral option has been added for the ‘ballet dancer’ emoji.
Explanation for the Reduce Bright Effects setting
Previously known as Reduce Highlighting Effects, the Reduce Bright Effects setting under Accessibility now showcases an explanation of what its function is. It reads “Minimizes highlighting and flashing when interacting with onscreen elements, such as buttons or the keyboard”. As for what the feature actually does, it reduces the animations when interacting with buttons or keyboard keys in the UI. This could be helpful for those who find flashy and light elements in iOS 26 annoying.
Changes to RCS encrypted messaging
Apple has pulled the RCS end-to-end encryption beta feature from iOS 26.4’s beta, after it appeared in earlier beta versions. The company previously stated that RCS end-to-end encryption wouldn’t arrive with the stable iOS 26.4 release and instead would come in a future update. Apple tested the encryption for both iPhone-to-iPhone RCS chats and iPhone-to-Android ones. While iMessage is already end-to-end encrypted, a future update will bring the same protection to cross-platform RCS conversations between iPhones and Android devices.
New devices eligible for iOS beta updates
The newly released iPhone 17e and iPad Air with M4 are now eligible to receive iOS public beta updates, starting with the iOS 26.4 beta 4 release.
Apple, being among the first brands to add a slew of new emojis, even though in beta form, ensures its users gain exclusive access to a variety of new ways to customise their texts, messages, and social media posts. However, it’s likely that the newly found emojis on iOS 26.4 beta, when posted online may not be visible to everyone. Since most users are still on the iOS 26.3 stable release (or earlier), these new emojis can’t be backported to appear on older iOS versions. Similarly, Android and Windows users won’t see them properly when posted online. They’ll just get a rectangular placeholder box for the unsupported emojis.
That being said, if you’re willing to get your hands on the newly released emojis by Apple early on, you can enrol for the beta programme from Apple’s official website, which lays out the procedure to install the update for several Apple devices. However, since it’s a beta release, there is a high chance the update will carry instabilities or glitches.
