Apple is preparing a major addition to its product lineup with the arrival of its first-ever smart glasses. The unveiling is expected at next year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 2027, while the market launch is slated for the end of 2027. It is still unclear whether the new line will debut alongside the next iPhone family or in a dedicated launch window of its own.
That timeline suggests Apple is pushing to get developers building applications for the new format now, so that a fully formed ecosystem is ready for users on day one.
The challenges ahead
These new Apple Glasses are arriving in anything but an easy climate. The big challenge will be calming the growing privacy concerns surrounding AI-powered, camera-equipped glasses. Tellingly, the unveiling had originally been planned for the end of 2026, with a launch in early 2027. After the wave of criticism aimed at Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, Apple’s team chose to slow down in order to refine both the product and the company’s messaging on privacy.
Many consumers remain wary both of wearing smart glasses and of interacting with other people who use them. The reason? They fear being recorded during an ordinary lunch, a job interview, a bike ride, on public transit and much more.
Apple intends to build in significant safeguards, some of them already seen on the Ray-Ban glasses. Among them is an indicator light that switches on whenever the glasses’ camera is recording, so that whoever is in front of the wearer knows they are in the frame.
How Apple plans to challenge Meta
When Apple announces its new smart glasses at WWDC 2027, it will lean heavily on a few specific selling points. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company will put the exclamation mark on features such as processing data directly on the device and the absence of facial recognition.
The expectation is that Apple will not follow Meta’s practice of having footage captured by its glasses reviewed by outside firms — a similar issue the company already had to confront with Siri, its voice assistant. Some observers even speculate that one solution to the privacy problem could be selling glasses without a camera at all. That would be a product offering hands-free access to advanced features, but without the ability to record other people.
Another option that Apple executives have reportedly weighed is to include the camera system while disabling photo and video capture altogether. The sensors would serve only to read the surrounding environment and feed data to the artificial-intelligence layer.
Editor’s note
This article was originally published in Italian on money.it by Pasquale Conte on July 27, 2026 as «Gli Apple Glass arrivano al WWDC 2027. Ecco come Cupertino vuole battere i Ray-Ban Meta». It has been translated and adapted for an international audience by the Money.it International desk.
