Meta’s Ray-Ban Display glasses and their gesture-sensing neural band promised a future where we’d be writing out messages on our legs with our fingers. I saw Meta’s team doing this last year, but I never got to try it myself. Now, if you have the glasses and band, you could try it too. Meta announced the news Tuesday along with info on a proof-of-concept smart car integration with Garmin that I demoed here at CES.
Support for handwriting recognition with a finger is rolling out in early access now to Ray-Ban Display glasses, which should give another option to responding to messages in the glasses besides voice dictation. My handwriting is terrible, and I’d prefer some sort of magic air-typing. But that doesn’t exist yet, although Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth suggested to me it could be in the cards someday.
The handwriting feature could work on any surface, according to Meta, like a desk (or your leg), but it’s only English-supported for now, and only works with Messenger and WhatsApp. The new feature is part of several new glasses updates, including a new teleprompter mode and support for pedestrian navigation in more US cities (32 now) using the built-in map app.
But don’t expect to try this outside the US anytime soon. Meta’s paused the international release of Ray-Ban Display glasses for now, citing extremely limited inventory and long waiting lists in the US.
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