Report: Apple's smart glasses delayed due to privacy concerns

Apple's marketing and engineering teams have decided to spend more time refining privacy messages and features.

Meta isn’t the first company to enter the smart glasses segment, but it has launched the first commercially successful smart glasses on the market. However, Meta’s smart glasses have gained a poor reputation for privacy. These products are equipped with small cameras that allow users to record their surroundings, and most of the time, other people can’t even notice it.

Of course, Meta has included some protective measures in its glasses, including a light to indicate when they are taking pictures or recording videos and the option to automatically turn off recording if the light appears to have been tampered with. Although, these measures might not be enough to gain the public’s trust.

Meta’s glasses’ reputation regarding privacy has reportedly caused Apple to delay the launch of its smart glasses and spend more time fine-tuning its marketing messages and technical features. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple’s Vision hardware group, which is working on smart glasses, has made privacy its No. 1 priority.

Instead of simply saying users should trust its glasses, Apple will reportedly emphasize distinctive features such as on-device processing, eliminating facial recognition, and removing a Meta-like super-sensing mode that continuously analyzes a wearer’s surroundings. Apple will also prevent contractors from reviewing footage captured by its glasses. “It’s also prototyping a slew of new hardware and software-related privacy features not available on current products,” Gurman added.

Apple now has two potential solutions to deal with the issue. The first is to entirely eliminate the camera on its smart glasses, which would still allow users to access AI features, audio, and phone calls, but there would be no option to record moments. Gurman claimed Apple has prototyped a similar concept during the development of its glasses.

The second solution is to include a camera but not allow it to record photos or videos at all. Instead, the camera would only be used to provide surrounding data to AI features. Apple’s camera-equipped AirPods are also rumored to get a similar feature.

However, despite all the privacy concerns, the ability to record videos and photos is one of the most attractive features of smart glasses, and removing the camera or eliminating the ability to take photos and videos would greatly reduce the usability of these products.

This scenario is very similar to the concerns surrounding Apple AirTag, a product that was initially launched to help users track their belongings but later became a tool for stalking or even theft.

Finally, Bloomberg says Apple’s smart glasses were initially planned for introduction later this year. However, the company now apparently wants to unveil them at next June’s Worldwide Developers Conference, with the official release planned for the end of 2027.

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Posted Monday 27 July 2026 at 8:10 am AEST (my time).

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