WWDC 2025: Apple Vision Pro's visionOS 26 — A Leap into Spatial Computing for Every Industry

The future isn't just coming; it's here, and it's spatial. At WWDC 2025, Apple unveiled visionOS 26, a monumental update for Apple Vision Pro that promises to redefine how we interact with digital content and, more importantly, how industries operate.

This isn't merely about entertainment or personal use; visionOS 26 introduces groundbreaking features that will revolutionize fields from oil and gas to pharmaceuticals and fire safety. Let's dive into the innovations that are set to transform our professional landscapes.

Key Features of visionOS 26

Spatial Widgets: Your Digital World, Anchored in Reality

Imagine your favorite widgets — weather, clock, music — no longer confined to a flat screen, but seamlessly integrated into your physical space. With visionOS 26, widgets become spatial, allowing you to arrange them intuitively within your environment.

These customisable widgets offer a new dimension of personalised information at a glance, reappearing exactly where you left them every time you don your Apple Vision Pro. This seemingly simple innovation has profound implications for how we access and interact with data in real-world contexts.

Enhanced Shared Spatial Experiences: Collaboration Redefined

Collaboration takes a giant leap forward with visionOS 26's enhanced shared spatial experiences. Whether you're in the same room or across the globe, Vision Pro users can now come together in a shared virtual space to watch movies, play games, or, most significantly, collaborate on complex projects.

This capability is already being leveraged by companies like Dassault Systèmes, who are using it within their 3DLive app to visualise intricate 3D designs with both in-person and remote colleagues. The ability to interact with shared digital content in a collective spatial environment opens up unprecedented opportunities for teamwork and problem-solving.

Realistic Personas: Connecting with Unprecedented Fidelity

Personas in visionOS 26 have undergone a remarkable transformation, achieving a new level of naturalness and familiarity. Utilising industry-leading volumetric rendering and machine learning, these enhanced Personas offer striking expressivity, sharpness, and even full side profiles with accurate hair, lashes, and complexion. This advancement significantly improves the sense of presence and connection during virtual interactions, making remote meetings and collaborations feel more personal and engaging than ever before.

Spatial Scenes: Photos That Come Alive

visionOS 26 elevates spatial photos to an entirely new level of realism. Leveraging a new generative AI algorithm and computational depth, spatial scenes create multiple perspectives, allowing you tolean in and look around within the image. This immersive viewing experience is available in the Photos app, Spatial Gallery app, and Safari.

Developers can also utilize the Spatial Scene API to create even more immersive app experiences, as demonstrated by Zillow, which uses the API in its Immersive app to provide rich depth and dimension to images of homes and apartments.

New Ways to Browse, Play, and Watch: Beyond the Screen

visionOS 26 introduces innovative ways to engage with content. Users can now opt for spatial browsing in Safari, transforming articles by hiding distractions and revealing spatial scenes that animate as they scroll.

Web developers gain the ability to embed 3D models directly into web pages, enabling users to shop and browse with depth and dimension, and interact with 3D objects and models directly within Safari. Furthermore, visionOS 26 supports native playback of 180-degree, 360-degree, and wide field-of-view content from popular cameras like Insta360, GoPro, and Canon, allowing users to experience action footage as intended.

The addition of PlayStation VR2 Sense controller support opens up a new class of engaging gameplay experiences on Apple Vision Pro, complete with high-performance motion tracking, finger touch detection, and vibration support.

Enterprise APIs and Tools: Empowering Professional Workflows

Recognizing the growing adoption of Apple Vision Pro in professional settings, visionOS 26 introduces a suite of enterprise-focused APIs and tools. Features like team device sharing simplify the setup and management of shared Vision Pro devices within organizations.

Users can securely save their eye and hand data, vision prescription, and accessibility settings to their iPhone and seamlessly transfer them to another Vision Pro, streamlining device sharing.

The new Protected Content API is a significant security enhancement, ensuring that confidential materials like medical records or business forecasts are only accessible to authorised personnel, preventing copying, screenshots, and screen sharing.

Additionally, visionOS 26 supports the Logitech Muse, a spatial accessory designed for precise input and enhanced interaction with collaboration apps like Spatial Analogue.

More Apple Intelligence Features

visionOS 26 also brings an expansion of Apple Intelligence features to Apple Vision Pro, including updates to Image Playground, further enhancing the device's capabilities for creative and intelligent tasks.

Industry Applications: Transforming Workflows with Spatial Computing

The advancements in visionOS 26 are not just incremental updates; they are foundational shifts that will profoundly impact various industries, enabling new levels of efficiency, safety, and innovation.

Oil and Gas Simulations: Immersive Training and Operational Excellence

The oil and gas industry, with its complex operations and high-stakes environments, stands to benefit immensely from visionOS 26. Spatial Widgets can provide real-time operational data overlays in a 3D environment, allowing engineers to monitor equipment performance or well pressure directly within a virtual representation of a refinery or drilling site.

Imagine a spatial widget displaying live sensor readings anchored to a virtual pump, providing immediate visual feedback on its status.Enhanced Shared Spatial Experiences will revolutionize training and collaborative problem-solving. Instead of traditional classroom settings, new hires can undergo immersive simulations of drilling operations or emergency response procedures in a shared virtual space.

Multiple engineers, regardless of their physical location, can collaborate on complex geological models, analysing seismic data or reservoir simulations together in a shared 3D environment. Dassault Systèmes' 3DLive app, already leveraging shared spatial experiences for design, could be adapted for visualising and interacting with complex oil and gas infrastructure.Spatial Scenes and the ability to embed 3D models in Safari will be invaluable for visualising equipment and infrastructure.

Engineers can explore highly detailed 3D models of pipelines, offshore platforms, or subsea equipment, gaining a deeper understanding of their design and functionality. This can aid in maintenance planning, identifying potential failure points, and optimizing operational layouts. The Protected Content API will be crucial for securing sensitive proprietary data related to exploration, production, and intellectual property, ensuring that only authorized personnel can access and interact with confidential simulations or operational plans.

Pharma: Accelerating Discovery and Enhancing Collaboration

In the pharmaceutical industry, the ability to visualize and interact with complex molecular structures and biological processes is paramount. Spatial Scenes and the integration of 3D models in Safari will allow researchers to explore drug compounds, protein structures, and cellular mechanisms in an unprecedentedly immersive way.

Imagine manipulating a 3D model of a drug molecule to understand its binding affinity to a target protein, or visualising the intricate pathways of a disease at a cellular level. This can significantly accelerate drug discovery and development processes.Enhanced Shared Spatial Experiences will foster global collaboration among scientists. Researchers from different continents can come together in a shared spatial environment to discuss experimental results, analyse data visualisation's, and collaboratively design new experiments.

This can break down geographical barriers and accelerate the pace of scientific discovery. The realistic Personas will enhance the feeling of presence and connection during these virtual collaborations, making remote scientific discussions more engaging and productive.The Protected Content API will be critical for safeguarding highly sensitive research data, patient information, and intellectual property.

Clinical trial data, proprietary drug formulations, and confidential research findings can be securely accessed and reviewed within the Vision Pro environment, preventing unauthorised copying or sharing. This ensures compliance with strict regulatory requirements and protects valuable assets.

Fire Safety: Advanced Training and Real-time Incident Management

Fire safety professionals can leverage visionOS 26 for advanced training simulations and real-time incident management. Spatial Scenes can be used to create highly realistic simulations of burning buildings, chemical spills, or other emergency scenarios. Firefighters can practice evacuation procedures, learn to navigate smoke-filled environments, and train on the proper use of equipment in a safe and controlled virtual setting.

The ability to incorporate 180-degree, 360-degree, and wide field-of-view content from cameras like GoPro can be used to recreate actual incident footage for post-incident analysis and training.Enhanced Shared Spatial Experiences will enable collaborative training exercises where multiple firefighters can participate in the same virtual incident, practicing coordinated responses and communication. Incident commanders can use shared spatial environments to visualise the unfolding situation, overlaying real-time data from sensors or drones onto a 3D model of the affected area.

The realistic Personas will facilitate more effective communication and teamwork during these critical simulations and real-time operations.Spatial Widgets can provide critical real-time information during an incident, such as building blueprints, hazardous material manifests, or the location of trapped individuals, overlaid directly onto the firefighter's field of view.

This immediate access to crucial data can significantly improve situational awareness and decision-making in high-stress environments. The Protected Content API can ensure that sensitive building schematics or emergency response plans are only accessible to authorized personnel during an incident.

Conclusion: The Spatial Future is Now

visionOS 26 is more than just a software update; it's a testament to Apple's commitment to pushing the boundaries of spatial computing. From spatial widgets that seamlessly integrate digital information into our physical world to enhanced shared experiences that redefine collaboration, and from realistic Personas that foster deeper connections to enterprise-grade APIs that secure sensitive data, these innovations are poised to transform how we work, learn, and interact across a multitude of industries.

The applications in oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, and fire safety are just a glimpse of the immense potential that Apple Vision Pro, powered by visionOS 26, holds for a future where the digital and physical worlds merge to create unprecedented opportunities for innovation and human advancement. The spatial future is not just on the horizon; it's here, and it's ready to be explored.