Apple officially announced visionOS 2 at its annual WWDC Conference today. visionOS 2 will introduce new features and multiple improvements across the operating system.
visionOS 2 system hand gestures.
visionOS 2 will add two system hand gestures. The app launcher is accessed by pinching the index finger against your thumb when you open your hand. This menu gesture was also used on Meta Quest headsets. The Control Center will open by pinching it. Pinching it will open Control Center.
The update will also allow you to rearrange apps on your home screen, which is currently forced to alphabetical sorting with no customization.
visionOS 2 turns regular photos into 3D “spatial photos”.
visionOS 2 will turn regular photos into Spatial Photos, making them 3D using “advanced machine learning”.
The Mac Virtual Display feature is set to get major improvements, expanding the display into a virtual ultrawide equivalent to two 4K monitors together. Apple says this is powered by eye-tracked dynamic foveation.
The new ultrawide Mac Virtual Display.
Safari is getting support for playing fullscreen videos on a gigantic virtual screen in a virtual environment, including YouTube and Netflix.
A new virtual environment will be available, called Bora Bora.
Vision Pro will also become an AirPlay target, allowing you to easily cast media from other Apple devices such as your iPhone.
The new Bora Bora environment and Safari’s new massive screen mode.
Your physical Magic Keyboard will show in fully immersive environments, called Keyboard Breakthrough, and physical mice are now supported.
Guest Mode is also getting a significant upgrade. visionOS 2 will allow you to add Guest Users and save their hand and eye setup for up to 30 days.
Travel Mode, currently designed for airplanes, is getting support for trains.
And as was
, visionOS 2 will add a Live Captions option which will apply to live conversations via microphone input as well as audio from any app, including on FaceTime calls.
Live Captions in visionOS 2.announced in MayApple is also introducing new APIs for developers to expand the kind of visionOS apps they can build.
HealthKit is also coming to visionOS, enabling health and fitness apps to store and read data to and from your Apple Health profile.
Apple is also making improvements to scene understanding, including adding object tracking and allowing anchoring objects to real surfaces of any orientation.
A new TabletopKit will make it easier for developers to “quickly build shared and collaborative app experiences centered around a table, like board games or a manufacturing workstation”.
visionOS 2 Also Improves Apple Vision Pro’s Hand Tracking
visionOS 2 brings major improvements to hand tracking on Apple Vision Pro and expands the headset’s understanding of the environment around you.
With visionOS 2, Apple Vision Pro Can Track 3D Objects
visionOS 2 adds the ability to track and augment 3D objects that app developers prespecify.
Haunted Chess, a game built with the new TabletopKit.
New Enterprise APIs for non-public internal apps are coming too, including
.
Apple also announced that Vision Pro is raw passthrough camera access outside the US soon.