Google announces Android XR, a new OS for headsets and smart glasses

Google is taking different tally astatine making headsets work. The institution just announced Android XR, a caller operating strategy designed specifically for what Google calls “extended reality” devices similar headsets and glasses. It’s moving with Samsung and tons of different hardware manufacturers to make those headsets and glasses, is making the caller mentation of Android disposable to developers now, and hopes to commencement shipping XR worldly adjacent year.

We don’t yet person a ton of details connected precisely however Android XR volition enactment oregon however it mightiness disagree from the Android connected your phone. (The Verge’s Victoria Song got to effort a fewer demos and prototypes — marque definite you work her story.) Google is making immersive XR versions of apps similar Maps, Photos, and YouTube and says it’s processing a mentation of Chrome that lets you bash multiwindow multitasking successful your browser. It volition besides enactment existing telephone and tablet apps from the Play Store, overmuch successful the aforesaid mode Apple supports iPad apps in the Vision Pro.

Google’s Gemini AI, of course, is astatine the precise halfway of the full experience. Google has been trying to ace headsets for much than a decennary — determination was Glass and Cardboard and Daydream, each of which had bully ideas but nary of which turned into overmuch — and the institution thinks AI is the cardinal to making the idiosyncratic acquisition work. “We judge a integer adjunct integrated with your XR acquisition is the slayer app for the signifier factor, similar what email oregon texting was for the smartphone,” said Sameer Samat, who oversees the Android ecosystem astatine Google, successful a property briefing up of the launch. As Gemini becomes much multimodal, too, capable to some seizure and make audio and video, glasses and headsets abruptly marque overmuch much sense.

The prime of the word “XR” for the OS is possibly the astir absorbing part. There are a cardinal presumption and acronyms for this space: there’s virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, extended reality, and others, each of which mean antithetic but overlapping things. XR is astir apt the broadest of the terms, which seems to beryllium wherefore Google picked it. “When we accidental extended world oregon XR,” Samat said, “we’re truly talking astir a full spectrum of experiences, from virtual world to augmented world and everything successful between.”

Google imagines headsets that tin seamlessly modulation from virtual worlds to existent ones — again similar the Vision Pro — and astute glasses that are much of an always-on companion. It’s besides funny successful audio-only devices similar the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses. Some things mightiness beryllium standalone; others mightiness beryllium much similar an accessory to your phone. We’ll spot if Google ends up gathering its ain XR hardware, but it’s intelligibly trying to enactment a immense spectrum of devices.

Android XR is inactive successful its aboriginal stages, and astir developers are lone present going to commencement getting the bundle and hardware they request to physique for the caller OS. But Google’s trying to determination rapidly adjacent year: a instrumentality it’s gathering with Samsung, codenamed Moohan, is seemingly slated to vessel adjacent year. Android XR is, successful immoderate ways, a culmination of bets Google has been making successful AI, the broader Android ecosystem, and the wearable aboriginal of technology. All of those bets are astir to get the existent test: whether anyone really puts them on.