This week, Apple unveiled visionOS 26, and one of its standout features is spatial widgets: customizable, three-dimensional elements that users can pin to their surroundings and glance at while wearing an Apple Vision Pro.
And while they’re technically impressive and undeniably cool-looking (especially that wall-embedded ones), they might also be Apple’s first hint at what we could expect from a long-rumored smart home product.
With customizable Batteries, Calendar, Clock, Music, News, Notes, Photos, Podcasts, Reminders, Stocks, and Weather widgets (plus third-party support), these new Apple Vision Pro add-ons are a great addition to the headset’s productivity set of features.
But as soon as I saw them, all I could think about was Apple’s rumored HomePad (a name floated by the rumor mill, not Apple), a wall-mounted and/or a dockable table-bound tablet that will reportedly designed for home control, HomeKit scenes, intercom, cameras, and quick access to personal info.
Prototyping in plain sight
If you own a Google Nest Hub or an Amazon Echo Show, you already know some of the value that these smart displays can add to your daily routine. Granted, they’re not for everyone, but still, they have become a natural part of many households, offering bite-sized information at a glance, from weather and calendar updates to timers and reminders.
That’s why these new spatial widgets might feel more familiar to smart display users than to most people. At the same time, the idea of pinning a static (albeit beautiful) widget to a digital wall might feel a bit limited when compared to the contextual intelligence of those physical displays.
Yes, these spatial widgets might be great for Vision Pro users who want a persistent, specific, glanceable piece of info on their walls. But it seems that a natural new widget option could be something like the Smart Stack, proactively offering contextually-aware information just when the user needs it.
From there, it’s not hard to imagine these ideas extending to a physical smart display. Add a couple of cameras, and now you’ve got support for Spatial Photos. Obviously, it’s not that simple (or that cheap), but you get the idea.
Bringing it home
The new visionOS 26 spatial widgets look great, full stop. But more intriguingly, they show Apple working through the user experience of what it means to live with ambient information.
Suddenly, the idea of a “HomePad” sounds less like an Echo Show clone or a repurposed iPad, and more like a purpose-built dashboard that actively adapts to its surroundings.
Whether that’s enough to stop people from just slapping an iPad on the wall is another story. But maybe that’s not the point. While many assumed Apple would need to go cheaper to make the HomePad work, what if it goes smarter instead, building something an iPad simply can’t do?
If nothing else, that sure feels more Apple-y than the alternative.
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