Apple announces: Visual inspection of iPhones is coming

It is now possible to navigate your personal phone or tablet using only your eyes. Tech giant Apple has confirmed that it has enabled eye tracking on iPhone and iPad.

The idea of controlling your smartphone with your eyes may sound like technology from a science fiction movie. But for millions of iPhone users around the world, it will be possible.

Apple has confirmed that it has enabled eye tracking on both iPhone and iPad. Using artificial intelligence (AI), the tool will allow users to navigate Apple devices using only their eyes.

“Eye Tracking uses the front-facing camera to set up and calibrate in seconds, and thanks to on-device machine learning, all data used to set up and control this feature is securely stored on the device and not shared with Apple,” the statement said.

Eye Tracking works across iPadOS and iOS apps and does not require any additional hardware or accessories. Once installed, users can navigate between elements of an app and activate each element, accessing additional functionality such as physical buttons, swipes and other gestures with just their eyes.

The new feature will roll out later this year, but has already garnered a lot of attention on X (formerly Twitter).

“This is great news for people with disabilities, but for the rest of us it means getting lazier than we already are,” one user tweeted. Another commented, “Black Mirror episodes are making more and more sense every day.”

NEW FEATURES COMING SOON

The eye-tracking tool was one of many new accessibility features Apple announced this week. Among the new features announced by the tech giant was one that the company said could reduce motion sickness for passengers in moving vehicles.

Apple said research shows that motion sickness is often caused by a sensory conflict between what a person sees and what they feel.

However, the new Vehicle Motion Cues feature, which places animated dots at the edges of the screen to represent changes in the vehicle's motion, could help reduce sensory conflict and therefore motion sickness.

Another new feature is Music Haptics, which activates vibrations in the device on iPhone to enable people who are deaf or hard of hearing to experience music that vibrates with the sound of the music.

Apple said it is also introducing new speech features that allow users to assign custom phrases to virtual assistant Siri to help people with conditions that affect their speech with shortcuts.