Apple's forthcoming camera-equipped AirPods have been detailed further after code was found buried in an early build of macOS Tahoe 26.7, following an earlier accidental leak of a demo video. Each earbud will reportedly carry its own low-resolution RGB camera, with images synchronised by Apple's Visual Intelligence software rather than used to record conventional photos or video, addressing some privacy concerns about the wearable cameras.

The cameras will capture stills of up to 1 megapixel, with onboard processing (described in code as "peripheral inference") accounting for head movement and rejecting blurred or obscured shots. There will be active and passive capture modes affecting image quality, and each earbud is expected to include a capture indicator light. The only demonstrated use case so far shows Siri "remembering" a book a user looked at, as part of Apple's delayed Visual Intelligence upgrade to Siri. Apple's iPhone 18 event next month could bring further details, though Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has suggested the AirPods won't launch until 2027.