Apple released iOS and iPadOS 17.4, the fourth major updates to the operating systems that launched in September and Federico reviewed on MacStories.

Apple released iOS and iPadOS 17.4, the fourth major updates to the operating systems that launched in September and Federico reviewed on MacStories.

iOS 17.4 is a significant release, bringing major platform changes to iOS in Europe as part of Apple’s response to the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), as well as a handful of new features, including transcripts in Apple’s Podcasts app, new emoji, multilingual updates to Siri, and more.

Let’s dive in, starting with the main changes for iPhone owners in the EU.

Major Changes to Safari and the App Store on iOS in the European Union :

As part of Apple’s response to the EU’s DMA, iOS 17.4 comes with three major changes to comply with the new rules:

* After updating to iOS 17.4, users in the EU are now prompted to choose a new default web browser.
* iOS 17.4 now supports third-party web browser engines in the EU.
* iOS 17.4 now supports alternative app marketplaces in the EU.

New Default Browser Prompt :

If you live in the EU, the first change you are going to notice after updating to iOS 17.4 is a new “About Your Default Browser” screen that will appear the first time you open Safari, prompting you to pick a new default browser. While it was already possible to set an alternative default web browser on iOS, the DMA now requires Apple to prompt all of its EU users to actively make this choice.

This screen includes a small explainer that lets you know about your ability to choose a different default browser at any time. After you tap “Continue,” you will be presented with a list of alternate browsers. If you tap a browser in the list, you will be presented with its App Store listing, and will be able to install it with a single tap. If you tap “Not Now” at the bottom of the screen, on the other hand, you will keep using Safari as your default web browser. While it is impossible to re-invoke this screen after you dismiss it, you can still choose a different default browser in Settings at any later time, as usual.

For each EU member country, the list of alternate browsers contains the 12 most popular browsers from its App Store storefront, and is displayed to the user in a random order. Check out John’s story on MacStories for the full list of alternate browsers that will now be presented to iPhone owners in the EU after they update to iOS 17.4.



If you lived in the EU through the 2010s, this may sound familiar. From 2010 to 2014, Microsoft had to present a similar “Browser Choice” screen in Internet Explorer to all of its Windows users in the European Union, after the European Commission determined that the company was abusing its dominant position in the market for personal computer operating systems to unfairly advantage Internet Explorer over available alternate browsers. Since Apple’s Safari for Windows was listed as an alternative browser at the time, it is interesting to see this screen come back more than a decade later on iOS, this time with Safari as the designated gatekeeper.

Support for Third-Party Browser Engines :

Third-party browser engine support in iOS 17.4 effectively means that browser makers are now allowed to launch a version of their web browser that does not run on Apple’s WebKit engine, and runs on their own browser engine instead. In practice, Google is now allowed to launch a version of Chrome for iOS running on their own Blink engine, and Mozilla a version of Firefox running on their own Gecko engine.

However, since support for third-party browser engines does not include iPadOS, and is only available in the EU, Google and Mozilla have been highly critical of the conditions of this change. The latter underlining that “The effect of this would be to force an independent browser like Firefox to build and maintain two separate browser implementations — a burden Apple themselves will not have to bear.”

Although I’m sure we will see independent developers release their own browsers in the EU built with third-party browser engines, it remains unclear at this time whether major browser makers like Mozilla and Google will launch separate versions of their browsers for iOS users in the EU built on top of their own engines.

Home Screen Web Apps Remain Unchanged :

As part of its effort to add support for third-party browser engines — and because Home Screen web apps can currently only be powered by the WebKit engine — Apple initially announced that iOS 17.4 would remove support for Home Screen web apps in the European Union in order to comply with the DMA:



However, following online protests, and reports that Apple would be facing investigation from the EU regarding this move, the company announced last week that they were walking back this decision:

As a result, web apps added to the Home Screen, and most notably Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), should all continue to work as expected in iOS 17.4 in the EU, and remain powered by Apple’s WebKit engine.

Support for Alternative App Marketplaces :

Just like third-party browser engines, we have yet to see alternative app marketplaces launch on iOS in the EU, and we will be checking those out as soon as they become available.

During the iOS 17.4 beta cycle, however, we had a preview of the confirmation screen that will appear when installing an app from an alternative app marketplace. The confirmation screen would appear upon installing any app from the iOS App Store in the EU, but Apple has since confirmed that this was a bug, and that users should not see this screen when they download an app from their default app marketplace.

It should be noted that, even if you live in the EU, none of the above applies to iPadOS, where Apple’s App Store remains the only way to install applications, and where support for third-party web browsers remains unchanged — and restricted to WebKit.

There are many more technical changes in iOS 17.4 that relate to Apple’s response to the DMA, including the ability for developers in the EU to use NFC to offer contactless payments without using Apple Pay, and the ability for developers to publish game streaming apps in Apple’s App Store (not limited to the EU).

Check out MacStories’ continued DMA coverage for the full details.

Transcripts for Podcasts :

In iOS and iPadOS 17.4, Apple now offers automatic transcriptions in the Podcasts app. Listeners are now able to follow along their favorite podcasts with their transcripts highlighting in sync with the audio. In practice, the feature feels a lot like real-time lyrics in Apple Music, and works amazingly well.

From the Now Playing screen in the Podcasts app, in the bottom-left corner, you can now see if a transcript is available for the currently playing podcast. If a transcript is not available, the new button is simply greyed out. If it is available, though, you can tap it to open the real-time transcript view in fullscreen. This is where words and sentences will highlight in sync with the audio. If you wait for a few seconds, the player controls will fade away, and reveal a ‘Search’ button, letting you search through the entire transcript.

But that’s not all. On the Now Playing screen, if a podcast episode has chapters, they will appear directly inline in the transcript. Blocks of text in the transcript can be scrolled through, and tapped to jump to a specific segment of the podcast. You can also long-press a block of text to start selecting text in the transcript.


Source : Mac Stories