Safari on Apple Vision Pro's visionOS is getting support for spatial photos and spatial videos embedded in web pages.
The revelation comes from an interview with two Apple employees conducted by photography news outlet PetaPixel. According to those employees, the feature will arrive in Safari later this year.
What Are Spatial Photos & Spatial Videos?
Spatial Video is Apple's term for stereoscopic 3D video using the Apple HEVC Stereo Video Profile format of MV-HEVC.
Spatial Photos are the still image equivalent, multi-image HEIC files.
Spatial photos and videos can be captured by all iPhone 16 models, the iPhone 15 Pro models, and Apple Vision Pro itself.
It's already possible to share spatial photos and spatial videos via the web for viewing on Apple Vision Pro, but the headset wearer would need to download the file and view it in the Photos app to see it in 3D.
With the upcoming Safari update, you'll see this depth on the webpage itself, no need to download. Anyone not wearing an Apple Vision Pro will still see the content, but in regular 2D. Note however that since Apple spatial photos use HEIC, which is only supported by Safari, only Apple device users will be able to see them, and websites will need to serve converted JPEG, PNG, or WebP versions to others.
David Heaney
The news comes just days after Vimeo added support for uploading spatial videos from iPhone and Apple Vision Pro and viewing it in the new Vimeo visionOS app. Theoretically, platforms like Vimeo could use the upcoming Safari update to serve spatial video without the need for an app. Though to be clear, it hasn't announced plans for this.
Canon's upcoming spatial lens (left) and Apple's upcoming Final Cut Pro update (right).
And iPhones and Vision headsets soon won't be the only way to capture in Apple's spatial video format. Canon will soon release a "spatial lens" attachment for its EOS R7 cameras for professional quality native spatial video capture.
Apple also said it will release a Final Cut Pro update adding support for editing spatial videos and adding "immersive titles and effects".
