Eye Tracking Availability and App Requirements in iPadOS 18

Question

risingtide OP

Created Jun ’24

Replies 4

Boosts 4

Views 1.2k

Participants 6

Very excited about the new eye tracking in iPadOS and iOS 18. Some general eye tracking questions.

Does the initial iPadOS 18 beta include eye tracking? If not, in which beta will it be included?
Do developers need to do anything to their app for users to control their app using eye tracking?
Will all standard UIKit and SwiftUI views and controls work with eye tracking without code changes?
Will custom subclasses of UIControl work with eye tracking without code changes?

Looking forward to testing eye tracking.

Answered by Engineer in 790125022

Hi risingtide,

Yes, iPadOS & iOS 18 beta 1 include Eye Tracking;
In the vast majority of cases, you shouldn't need to do anything! I'll elaborate in the two answers below :)
Yes, all standard UIKit & SwiftUI views are expected to just work with Eye Tracking with no additional changes needed.
For custom subclasses of UIControl, please make sure you return UIAccessibilityTrait.Button as part of that control's accessibilityTraits. Similarly for more custom SwiftUI views/controls, Eye Tracking's Snap to Item feature will only focus on things that have the isButton accessibility trait added with the accessibilityAddTraits(_:) modifier.

Hope this helps!

Boost

Answer 1

iSamuelBarney OP

Jun ’24

I haven't seen anyone really talk about this from Apple yet, is there an issue with Eye Tracking then?

0

Answer 2

Engineer OP

Apple

Jun ’24

Accepted Answer

Hi risingtide,

Yes, iPadOS & iOS 18 beta 1 include Eye Tracking;
In the vast majority of cases, you shouldn't need to do anything! I'll elaborate in the two answers below :)
Yes, all standard UIKit & SwiftUI views are expected to just work with Eye Tracking with no additional changes needed.
For custom subclasses of UIControl, please make sure you return UIAccessibilityTrait.Button as part of that control's accessibilityTraits. Similarly for more custom SwiftUI views/controls, Eye Tracking's Snap to Item feature will only focus on things that have the isButton accessibility trait added with the accessibilityAddTraits(_:) modifier.

Hope this helps!

2

Answer 3

KTRosenberg OP

Jun ’24

@Engineer Are you able to use eye tracking as a regular API within an app? I’m interested in triggering an event upon some short dwell time over a specific region of the screen.

0

Answer 4

jgeiger2 OP

Jun ’24

Will one eye tracking become available like in VisionOS?? For example, I have a lazy eye, so eye tracking both eyes does not work for me

0