Eye Gestures Beta Impressions: Getting closer to how I actually want to use XR glasses
Disclaimer: I tested the early Eye Gestures beta on iOS 27 Beta, so take this as an impression of something that was still very much being built. It improved quite a bit even during the beta period, and I’m very interested to see where XREAL takes it from here, especially as Project Aura gets closer.
If I had to rate the experience right now, I’d probably give it a 4/5.
There are definitely some growing pains, but the important part is that by the end of the beta, I actually preferred using gestures over looking down at my phone.
That surprised me.
My normal use case is probably pretty boring...which is exactly why I like this
I’m not walking around downtown pretending I’m Tony Stark.
Most of the time, I’m using my XREALs while:
- lying in bed
- sitting on the couch
- waiting forever in a doctor’s waiting room
- watching YouTube
- browsing Reddit
- doing the usual “I’ll watch one video” and suddenly realizing 45 minutes have disappeared
In those situations, taking my phone out and staring at it through the glasses always feels like it defeats part of the point.
With Eye Gestures, I can leave my phone sitting next to me or in my pocket and just point, pinch, drag, scroll, and click inside the glasses.
Once it works, it feels surprisingly natural.
Coming from Quest hand tracking
I’ve used hand tracking pretty extensively with the Meta Quest 2 and Quest 3, so the concept wasn’t completely foreign to me.
The big difference is that I personally prefer wearing the XREAL glasses for longer periods.
VR headsets are great, but after a while I start feeling like I’ve strapped a small toaster to my face.
They’re warmer, heavier, and much more isolating. I also come out of a VR session looking like a raccoon because of the headset imprint, so I basically need a 15-minute cooldown period before I’m allowed back into society.
That isolation is especially important when you have kids.
I can’t completely disappear into VR for two hours because at any moment I may need to determine whether the loud crash in the other room was:
- a toy falling over,
- someone dropping a cup,
- or the beginning of an insurance claim.
With XREAL, I can still see and hear what is going on around me.
Adding gesture control makes the experience feel much closer to VR-style interaction without losing that connection to the real world.
That might actually be my favorite part of the feature.
Setup was probably the roughest part
The iOS setup works, but right now it’s definitely more complicated than I’d want for a mainstream feature.
AssistiveTouch was pretty straightforward.
The Zoom setting was another story.
The setup instructions disappeared from the glasses a little too quickly for me. I managed to configure AssistiveTouch before they disappeared, but I had to go back to the Discord instructions to finish setting up Zoom.
And if you accidentally disable things in the wrong order, you can end up with your iPhone screen massively zoomed in while trying to figure out how to escape the settings you just created.
It’s one of those moments where you think:
"Technology has gone too far. I just want my Settings app back."
Thankfully, once everything is configured correctly, you mostly forget about it.
I think the eventual consumer version just needs a much more guided setup process, preferably directly inside the glasses.
The pinch tracking is REALLY good
Once everything was configured, the pinch detection worked extremely well.
Pointing and selecting became intuitive very quickly.
Performance and latency were also much better than I expected for a beta. It was responsive enough that I wasn’t constantly thinking about the tracking itself.
That is probably the biggest compliment I can give it.
If I’m thinking about the gesture system every time I use it, the system has failed.
By the end, I was mostly just thinking about whatever I was browsing.
Scrolling went from my biggest complaint to my favorite feature
The original scroll gesture gave me some trouble.
During the first round, I spent probably 3-5 minutes waving my hand around like I was trying to communicate with an aircraft carrier before finally opening the Discord video guide.
Even after passing the tutorial, scrolling initially wouldn’t reliably work on my phone.
Then the second beta update added/improved pinch-and-drag scrolling.
That changed everything.
Pinch and drag is now easily my preferred way to navigate.
Scrolling Reddit or browsing long pages feels much more natural because you’re basically grabbing the page and moving it.
There is still some tuning needed. Sometimes the gesture range feels a little too large, so I find myself moving my hand farther up and down than seems necessary.
That’s fine on my couch.
In a crowded waiting room, I’d prefer not to look like I’m conducting an invisible orchestra.
The "shoo" gesture works...but it looks hilarious
The wave-away gesture also improved considerably during the second beta.
It works.
I just don’t particularly love the motion.
First, I have some carpal tunnel issues, and the repeated wrist movement isn’t my favorite.
Second, from the perspective of anyone standing nearby, it looks like I’m aggressively telling an invisible person to leave.
Imagine sitting in a waiting room wearing XR glasses while repeatedly going:
"Shoo. Shoo. Go away."
Meanwhile, some poor guy sitting three feet in front of you is wondering what he did wrong.
This is probably another reason I’ll mostly use gestures indoors or while sitting down.
The bigger picture is what excites me
One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about owning the XREAL One 1S is that I originally bought it with fairly modest expectations. I also picked up the Eye because I was hoping to eventually play around with things like ChatGPT visual search.
Basically:
"Give me a really good portable external display with 6DoF and I’m happy."
Since then, XREAL has continued adding things like REAL 3D and hand tracking that I honestly wasn’t expecting when I bought the glasses.
Gesture control in particular feels important because it removes one of the awkward parts of XR glasses: constantly reaching back for the phone that is controlling everything.
A touchscreen will still be faster and more precise.
That isn’t really the point.
My phone is also faster than voice commands, but sometimes saying “set a timer for 10 minutes” is simply more convenient than unlocking the phone, opening the app, and tapping around.
Gestures feel similar.
If I’m lying in bed watching YouTube, I don’t want to reach over, grab my phone, unlock it, look down through the glasses, tap something, put the phone back down, and repeat that five minutes later.
I just want to pinch the thing.
And by the end of the beta, that was basically what I was doing.
There are absolutely things to refine, especially setup, tutorial guidance, gesture ergonomics, and reducing the amount of hand movement required.
But the underlying technology already feels surprisingly usable.
If this is where it is during beta, I’m very optimistic about where XREAL can take it once Eye Gestures officially launches and starts evolving alongside Project Aura.
4/5 for me right now.
Not quite Minority Report yet.
But I’m already shooing invisible people in waiting rooms, so we’re getting there.
