Apple is bringing eye tracking to the iPhone and iPad. This will allow you to control the devices with your eyes.
It’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day and to celebrate, Apple is announcing new accessibility features for the iPhone, iPad and Vision Pro.
Perhaps the coolest is eye tracking. It allows you to control your iPhone with your eyes. So you no longer have to press on the screen.
Eye tracking on iPhone and iPad
Eye tracking is one of the first true AI features on the iPhone and iPad. It allows you to control your device using only your eyes. Apple designed this feature specifically for people with physical disabilities, but you can just try it yourself.
For eye tracking, Apple uses the selfie camera to calibrate. This process only takes a few seconds. Through machine learning, the iPhone learns each time about how the user applies it.
The iPhone 15 Pro Max. (Image: Unsplash)
So it will be possible to control the iPhone by looking at your screen and moving your eyes. So you only have to look at a particular shortcut to open it. Or you can just move your eyes if you want to scroll further in a text, for example.
The nice thing is that all the data is stored on the iPhone itself. So no Internet connection is needed to use it. In addition, this also stores the data on the device itself. Thus, they are extra secure.
A preview of iOS 18
Unfortunately, the feature is not available at this time. Apple plans to bring it to the iPhone and iPad later this year. So in all likelihood, it won’t be available until iOS 18 or later.
This new feature gives us a taste of what to expect from iOS 18. Apple will also be focusing much more on AI, which should greatly improve ease of use.
