This new iOS 18.4 Safari feature won’t spare your blushes

Apple’s iOS 18.4 update will bring a small but significant change to the Safari web browser that you mightn’t be comfortable using in public.

When exploring the first public beta 9to5Mac noticed that, when opening a new Safari tab, the last few web searches will automatically appear when you tap the address bar.

Now this is probably a really handy feature for quickly revisiting your searches, but there are occasions when web users probably wouldn’t like this to be quite so visible – especially if you’re handing over your device for someone else to use. You can probably imagine those situations, but it might also be something as simple as spoiling a birthday present.

9to5Mac reports the Recent Searches feature can’t be turned off at present, but that can always be added in future iterations before iOS 18.4 hits the public. Furthermore, a screenshot also shows a ‘Clear All’ option that enables the recent searches to be removed from the screen. Use that regularly and folks should be in the clear.

iOS 18.4 is due next month with several new features on the way. The headliner is probably going to be the Apple Intelligence-based Priority Notifications. The Image Playground feature is getting a Sketch style to join the existing Animation and Illustration options.

Furthermore, there’s a new Apple News+ Food update that brings thousands of recipes, tips and step-by-step cooking instructions. The control centre is getting an option to start ambient music playlists from Apple Music too.

Although it hasn’t featured in the early beta, there’s also evidence within the code that Google Gemini may come to iOS 18.4 as a second third-party option for more advanced AI queries. Currently, iOS only offers OpenAI’s ChatGPT when queries that Siri can’t yet handle are made.

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