Apple Intelligence Comes to India (English) – Major iOS, macOS, visionOS Updates Released

Apple has officially released iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, and macOS Sequoia 15.4, introducing support for Apple Intelligence in India (English) along with several other languages – English (Singapore), French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese (simplified). The features have previously been available to users who set their compatible devices to English (US), but will now function with localised improvements.

Apple Intelligence includes Writing Tools for proofreading, summarising, transforming, and generating text; Clean Up for removing distracting objects from photos; Visual Intelligence which can look up information about objects by pointing a camera at them; and Image Playground for generating images in various styles. Apple Intelligence also introduces contextual search in the Photos app, so users can find photos and videos by describing their content. Image Wand in the Notes app can generate images from rough sketches or text descriptions. The Mail app can show high-priority messages first, and generate summaries of long threads. Phone calls and audio recordings can be transcribed and summarised.   

Additional features are set to roll out over time. Apple promises to protect users’ privacy by processing all AI tasks on-device or in a private cloud instance. ChatGPT integration allows for more complex requests to be processed, including problem-solving based on the content of images, and additional third-party integrations will be announced in the future. Language support will also continue to expand, though there's no word yet on Hindi or other Indian languages.

Apple Intelligence runs on all iPhone 16 series models including the new low-end iPhone 16e, as well as the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. All Macs and iPads with M1 or newer processors, plus the newest iPad mini, are supported. iOS 18.4 is available for devices as old as the iPhone XR. 

Apple has also brought Apple Intelligence features to the Vision Pro headset for the first time, in countries where it is available. visionOS 2.4 also allows headsets to easily be shared with guests, and a new Spatial Gallery helps users discover content that takes advantage of the device’s capabilities.

iOS 18.4 introduces new background ambient music playback through Apple Music, updated emoji, more filters in the Photos app, and other minor improvements. macOS Sequoia 15.4 gets a redesigned Mail app, and proximity-based Quick Start setup if you have another Apple device. tvOS 18.4 is a minor update with only a few UI improvements to the Apple TV app. 

Interestingly, Apple also released watchOS 11.4 with minor changes to alarm and smart home control features, but this update has been withdrawn for unknown reasons. 

The highly anticipated next-gen Siri with personal context awareness and the ability to take actions based on what’s on users’ screens, has been delayed to at least iOS 19. Originally announced at WWDC 2024 almost a year ago, it was not part of previous updates and has not been included this time either. 

Apple is widely expected to announce a huge visual refresh across its OS platforms at this year’s WWDC, but it is not known how much the company will talk about AI and what new features it plans to deliver.