Apple’s next Pencil may work with the Vision Pro headset

By Trevor Mogg March 25, 2024

A couple of news reports posted on Monday suggest that Apple has been testing a new Apple Pencil that can be used with the company’s recently released Vision Pro headset. One of them even suggests that the new Vision Pro-compatible Apple Pencil could launch alongside new iPads in the next few weeks, but this is by no means confirmed.

Both MacRumors and GSM Arena cited people with knowledge of the matter, with the former saying that support for the Apple Pencil would “essentially turn your surroundings into the Pencil’s canvas.”

Now, you may think that waving a pointy object around while wearing Apple’s Vision Pro sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, but thankfully, the reports suggest that the headset wearer would use a flat surface like a desk or a table to draw with the Pencil, working with apps such as Freeform and Pixelmator.

To get the two products to play nicely would also require a software update for the Vision Pro, but it’s not currently clear which version might add support. “The first beta of visionOS 1.2 will likely be made available to developers as early as this week, and Apple is expected to announce visionOS 2 at its annual developers conference WWDC in June,” MacRumors notes.

To be clear, Apple has made no public announcement regarding the possibility of Apple Pencil compatibility with the Vision Pro, and such a product may never make it to market. But considering these latest reports and the fact that an Apple Pencil for the Vision Pro hardly seems like an outlandish idea and would even be welcomed by artists and others, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple launch the product in the not-too-distant future.

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