visionOS 3 will be a “feature-packed release”, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports.
Gurman has a relatively strong track record of reliably reporting on Apple’s product plans years in advance, and successfully described many details of Apple Vision Pro’s hardware and software before it was officially revealed.
In the latest edition of his weekly newsletter, Gurman writes that visionOS 3, the third major version of the headset’s operating system, “will be a pretty feature-packed release, I’m told”.
Since launching Vision Pro and visionOS in February of last year, Apple has regularly updated the operating system to add new features and improvements.
David Heaney
The first feature update arrived in visionOS 1.1 in April, Spatial Personas. This extended the system’s realistic avatars from a 2D rectangle container into true 3D space, a step-change for telepresence technology.
In September, Apple released visionOS 2, the first major update.
visionOS 2 brought hand gestures for opening the main menu and control center, the ability to turn any photo into a spatial photo, improved hand tracking and scene understanding, WebXR by default in Safari, the ability to AirPlay your iPhone or iPad to a window, a Bora Bora virtual environment, the ability to see your physical keyboard, mouse support, guest user improvements, static 3D object tracking, train support for Travel Mode, Live Captions, new developer features, and raw camera access for enterprise.
David Heaney
Then, visionOS 2.2 in December brought Wide and Ultrawide modes for Mac Virtual Display, letting you view your Mac on a virtual Wide aspect ratio screen, or even an enveloping panoramic Ultrawide screen. The Ultrawide mode has 10K horizontal resolution, as if you have two 5K monitors side by side, made possible thanks to foveation.
Further, with visionOS 2.2 the audio from your Mac is now routed to Vision Pro, whereas previously it still played through the Mac.
David Heaney
The next significant update for Apple Vision Pro will be visionOS 2.4, set to release in April. It will bring a Spatial Gallery app, an iPhone app for remote installs, and a new iPhone/iPad-driven guest flow.
visionOS 2 was announced at WWDC 2024, Apple’s yearly software and developer event, with the first beta released later the same day. As such, we expect Apple to announce visionOS 3, and launch the beta, at WWDC 2025, expected to take place in June, three months from now.
David Heaney
