When Meta first announced its display-enabled smart glasses last year, it teased a handwriting feature that allows users to send messages by tracing letters with their hands. Now, the company is starting to implement it, with those enrolled in its Early Access program getting it first,
I got a chance to try out this feature at CES and it inspired me to start wearing my Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses more often. When I reviewed the glasses last year, I wrote that one of my favorite things about the Neural Band is that it has reduced my reliance on voice commands. I always feel a little embarrassed to talk in public wearing glasses.
Until now, replying to messages on Display Glass typically required voice dictation or a generic preset reply. But handwriting means you can finally send custom messages and replies in a somewhat discreet manner.
Sitting at a table wearing Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses and the Neural Band, I was able to quickly compose a message by drawing letters on the table in front of me. It wasn’t perfect – it misread the capital letter “I” as “H” – but it was surprisingly intuitive. I was able to quickly detect a short sentence and even correct a typo (swiping left to right lets you add a space, while swiping right to left removes the last letter).
Along with handwriting, Meta also announced a new teleprompter feature. Copy and paste a bunch of text – it supports up to 16,000 characters (equivalent to about half an hour of speech) – and you can beam your text to the glasses’ display.
If you’ve ever used a teleprompter, Meta’s version works a little differently in that the text doesn’t automatically scroll as you speak. Instead, text is displayed on individual cards that you manually swipe. The company told me it originally tested a scrolling version, but in early tests, people said they preferred to be in control when words appeared in front of them.
The teleprompter is rolling out now, although Meta says it may take a while to reach everyone.
These updates are some of the first major changes Meta has made to its display glasses since launching late last year and a sign that, like its other smart glasses, the company plans to keep them fresh with new features. Elsewhere at CES, the company announced some interesting new plans for the device’s Neural Band and said it was delaying the device’s planned international rollout.
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