Apple’s visionOS 2.4 Update Unpacked: New Features & Fixes

The Most Useful Features in visionOS 2.4

📸 Spatial Gallery Is Now Live

This new app curated by Apple showcases immersive spatial photos, videos, and panoramas, offering a premium content experience that highlights the hardware’s strengths.

• Expect stunning visuals spanning art, culture, travel, and nature.
• Apple says new content will be added regularly.
• It’s a slick demo of what spatial media can actually feel like in everyday use.

🛠️ Background Assets Framework

Developers can now preload and cache app content in the background, which improves load times and overall performance in visionOS apps.

• Great for media-heavy or interactive apps.
• Also supported in tvOS 18.4, adding cross-platform potential.

🛍️ StoreKit Upgrades

visionOS 2.4 introduces Advanced Commerce APIs, giving developers more control over how purchases and introductory offers are handled.

• You can now check if users qualify for discounts more flexibly.
• Includes better visibility into app transactions with fields like appTransactionID and originalPlatform.

Fixes That Make a Real Difference

While some changes are under the hood, a few key bug fixes are worth calling out:

✅ Apple Intelligence Now Works (Sort Of)

If you were testing Apple Intelligence features and got stuck in a weird download loop, that’s been fixed. Also, using Genmoji no longer crashes volumetric apps.

⚠️ Note: Full Apple Intelligence support is still evolving, and Genmoji in 3D apps isn’t fully ready yet.

✅ RealityKit and Animation Fixes

Previously, imported USD files with blend shape animations weren’t playing correctly in RealityKit-based apps.

That’s now sorted out—good news for developers working in 3D animation or AR environments.

✅ FaceTime + Personal Hotspot

There was a nasty bug where FaceTime calls would fail if you were using Personal Hotspot in certain configurations. That’s now resolved, making the headset more reliable on the go.

Developer-Focused Updates

If you’re building apps or testing on Vision Pro, here are some notable changes:

• SwiftUI Enhancements: More predictable behavior for tint colors, overlays, and navigation environments.
• URLSession Update: A new, more efficient HTTP loading mode is being rolled out (opt-in for now).
• Simulator Fixes: Fewer crashes when compiling assets.

And if you’re using libxml2, be aware that custom memory allocation is deprecated. This won’t affect most devs, but if your app manually manages XML memory, you’ll need to adapt to the new system-allocator model.

Known Issues to Watch

Every update comes with a few loose ends. Here’s what’s still not quite right:

• Guest User access may fail if the paired iPhone or iPad isn’t running the latest beta (iOS 18.4).
• After a reset, the Home View might vanish until you power cycle the device.
• Safari Extensions still missing in the visionOS simulator—something devs need to work around for now.

You can check the full release notes on Apple’s official Vision Pro developer page.