Leaked video shows Apple's new AirPod cameras
MacRumors ● Covered by 3 sources
Rumor — unconfirmed reporting.
A leaked video shows AirPods with built-in cameras, feeding Visual Intelligence so Siri can see and remember your surroundings. Apple's hiding this in a macOS beta, and it could launch as soon as next month with the new iPhones.
Based on reporting by MacRumors — read the original for the full story.
Summary, retelling and take written by AI under human oversight; images are AI-generated illustrations. How we work · Report an error
Buried inside the macOS Tahoe 26.7 release candidate, MacRumors found something Apple clearly didn't mean to show yet: a demo video of AirPods with cameras built in. In the clip, a man holds up a book so the earbuds' camera can read the title, while onscreen text explains that "with Visual Intelligence, your world becomes savable." Ask Siri to save something you're looking at, and apparently it just does.
This isn't a rumor pulled from an analyst's note this time — it's software Apple actually shipped to testers, just not meant to be poked through this closely. The video walks through setting up Visual Intelligence on the AirPods themselves, and even includes a warning that if your hair covers the earbuds, you'll get an alert telling you to clear them so the camera can get an accurate read on your environment. That's a strangely practical detail for something that, until now, existed mostly as a codename in Bloomberg reports.
Speaking of codenames, this hardware carries the internal tag B790, which Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has referenced before. Gurman has pointed to a September launch window, which would line up with Apple's usual iPhone event — the one expected to introduce the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and the long-rumored foldable iPhone Ultra. Worth noting: this is a separate project from the other camera AirPods effort, codenamed B798, which Apple has reportedly been developing for years as part of a wider AI wearables push alongside smart glasses and a pendant device — and which has apparently slipped from 2026 to 2027.
The same Tahoe 26.7 build reportedly contains references to a long list of other unannounced Apple products, so B790 isn't an isolated slip. But it's the most concrete look yet at what camera-equipped AirPods might actually feel like to use, straight from Apple's own marketing language rather than a leaker's paraphrase.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
Camera earbuds sound absurd until you remember Apple already trained everyone to accept AirPods listening in constantly, so a camera is just the logical next intrusion. The real story is that Apple is now running two separate camera-AirPod projects at once, which says the company is less sure than it looks about which version of ambient AI hardware actually works. Shipping the demo video by accident, in a beta build, is the kind of stumble that makes the September timeline feel more real than any Gurman tweet could.》
Read more about this at: MacRumors
