visionOS 26 is a modest update, but you’ll want to check out the game-changing features it includes. Widgets come to the Vision Pro in a clever way; you can freely arrange them in space or pin them to a wall. Personas are much improved, making your virtual FaceTime calls less creepy. And there are about a dozen other excellent quality-of-life features that’ll draw you back in, like app folders, a Jupiter environment, automatic iPhone unlocking and more.
You may have forgotten about the Vision Pro, but Apple hasn’t. Despite middling sales numbers, Apple is in this for the long haul — with regular software updates, a spec bump update due this year and a whole family of products in the works.
The update is out now; here’s what to expect.
Everything new in visionOS 26
The Vision Pro has a one-of-a-kind user interface. Although it’s a somewhat cumbersome product to put on, the experience of using it is like an invisible computer. Windows float in your physical space; they react to your eyes and hands as controls. As Apple’s newest and most exciting platform, it gets major new changes year-round — and this update is no exception. visionOS 26 is still compatible with the one and only Vision Pro headset, although a new model with more power could arrive this fall.
You may have noticed that Apple skipped from visionOS version 2 to 26 — that’s so that all the annual releases use the same number, of the upcoming year.
Table of contents: visionOS 26 new features
- Spatial Widgets
- New Personas are much better
- Must-have visionOS 26 features
- New 3D and immersive features
- Other major updates
1. Spatial Widgets
Image: Apple
Widgets from the iPhone, iPad and Mac come to the Vision Pro. Naturally, they’re not on the Home Screen or desktop — they’re in your real environment.
You can pin a widget to any surface (or free-floating location in space). Put a calendar on the wall. Put a photo widget on your TV. visionOS even has a special Apple Music widget that commemorates one of your favorite albums as decorative art.
I moved into a new house in May, and wasn’t sure where I should hang up a clock — but I was able to experiment and find the best place using the clock widget.
You can adjust whether a widget sticks out of or embeds itself within the wall, adjust the frame width and frame color.
2. New Personas are much better
Image: Apple
How do you have a FaceTime call from a Vision Pro, which covers up your face? Using a Persona, which is a virtual 3D recreation of your head and shoulders. Personas looked pretty bad at first, and were marginally improved in visionOS 2 — I looked like a sickly Irish boy.
But now in visionOS 26, Personas are vastly improved. My Persona looks genuinely excellent. Others are still having problems with beards, but I can report first-hand that it handles my head of hair well.
Must-have visionOS 26 features
Image: Apple
- Look to scroll automatically scrolls content when your eyes get to the edge. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work everywhere — it requires opting in by the developer of the app. But it’s very convenient in Safari.
- Unlock iPhone makes it much easier using your phone while you’re wearing the headset. Look at it, and it unlocks. You don’t need to type your passcode in every time.
- The Jupiter environment lets you view the gas giant in space. You can see it from the perspective of one of its moons.
- You can pin an app to a wall to perfectly align it against a surface, just like a widget. This is much easier than trying to line it up yourself.
- You can put apps in folders, which is all right. Really, all I want is the App Library on visionOS, but at least if you put in the work, you can mimic it yourself.
- Local sharing lets two people with Vision Pros see the same content in the same room at the same time. Annoyingly, this adds a second button to the bottom of every window for a feature I probably won’t use for at least a few years.
- Hand tracking at 90 Hz is much more accurate and fluid for high-precision tasks like gaming.
- In Image Playground, you can make images using ChatGPT instead of Apple’s somewhat inferior model, just like the iPhone.
New 3D and immersive features
Image: Apple
- The Vision Pro now supports new accessories for drawing and gaming, like the Logitech Muse 3D pen and the PlayStation VR2 Sense controller.
- You can drag 3D objects out of web pages and drop them in your physical space.
- Spatial Scenes from iOS are now on the Vision Pro, letting you look around a photo in 3D.
- You can natively play back wide field-of-view video, recorded on special cameras. Put yourself back in the center of the action by watching 180° and 360° videos.
- Safari has a new Immersive Reader mode that expands the window and removes distractions.
- You can see spatial scenes embedded in web pages.
Other major updates
Check out the other major updates Apple will release today:
