Apple introduced a product that will replace Face ID, which will be attached to the Vision Pro headset

Apple’s Vision Pro headset will take a new approach to the safety of the company’s products: your eyes. In fact, the Optical ID sensor is almost identical to Face ID, but uses a unique pattern of the iris of the eye to verify identity.

how will it work

The mixed reality device will use the Optical ID system, which examines the iris of the eye using invisible light and compares it to your registered eye data for login. You can use it to shop in the App Store or with Apple Pay, or you can use it as a password change.

The company emphasizes: vision data is encrypted and isolated in the headset. They never leave the device and cannot be used by other apps.. As with Face ID and Touch ID, attackers will have no way of misusing real images or raw information.

Optical ID is combined with other privacy protections in the Vision Pro headset. Neither Apple nor anyone else has access to eye tracking data. Data from cameras and sensors is processed at the system level, so apps cannot roam around your environment just to provide spatial functionality. If you are taking photos and videos, a visual indicator appears to alert people around you.

Iris scanning is not a new security concept. For example, Samsung introduced the iris login feature on the Galaxy Note 7. However, this is a relatively new idea for headphones and may be appreciated if you don’t want to reach for a keyboard (real or virtual) to start using the headset. This particular application is particularly important given Apple’s goals: it sees the Vision Pro as the start of a “spatial computing” platform where you can spend hours in mixed reality, and possibilities like Optic ID could make the platform more appealing.

In the future, when headsets evolve into lightweight and compact glasses and wearables completely replace smartphones, Face ID will be replaced by Optical ID. Apple may also implement this sensor under iPhone screens in a few years.