20 Tips For Using the Apple Vision Pro

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are some tips for using the Apple Vision Pro. 

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So after playing around with the Apple Vision Pro and actually using it for work for a few days here are some tips I've got if you got one or you're just curious to know what it is like to use one. 

So first let's go to the Notes App and talk about typing. Of course you can type here in the Notes App and you can do it with this keyboard that's on the screen. You can either touch the keys directly, like physically with your fingers. You can use two hands to do this. Or you can look to type. So looking at each letter and type like that. But you can also use the keyboard like you do the iPhone and iPad keyboard. You can tap and hold a letter. Let's tap and hold e and it brings up all the alternate characters. You can select one of those. Or you can look and click and it does the same thing. So you have all those great ways to type special characters if you want.  

Another great thing you can do is Text Replacements just like on all your other Apple devices. As a matter of fact it syncs over iCloud. So, you can do something like OMW and you can see On My Way appears there as the replacement or you can just hit Space and you can see how it typed it in there. You can get to Text Replacements and actually edit them by going into Settings and then under General there's Keyboard and you've got Text Replacements right there and you can get in and edit and create new ones if you want. 

Now you can also use Dictation to type but you actually have two modes of dictation just like you do on the Mac. So you can use Standard dictation which you can just look at the microphone icon and click on that and start typing and it will transcribe what you say. But you can also use Voice Control dictation just like on a Mac. So if you go into Settings  and then you go down to Accessibility you could see there is Voice Control and you can turn it On and you've got various commands, like you've got Text Selection Command, like that. All the stuff you've got on the Mac, Editing Commands and everything. So you can use Voice Control for kind of the advanced dictation. 

For selecting text you can do it one of two ways. One is you can look and kind of tap. So I can look now at the word fox and tap it. You can see it works. I can also reach out and grab text. So let's get rid of the keyboard here and I'm going to bring the window closer to me and I can actually tap the text and put the cursor where I want. Or double-tap and it will select things and I can select like that. Obviously for heavy word processing it is still going to be better to use a Bluetooth Keyboard. But you can do a lot here with just gestures and looking. 

Let's go back into Settings & Accessibility and there are a few things here that are interesting. One is, under Interaction, you can turn on Pointer Control and you can actually see where you are looking. This is particularly useful on some of the iPad Apps that don't really give you good feedback as to where you are looking before you Touch or Click. So having this turned On can be really useful and you can adjust the color. I've made it red here and you can increase the size. 

Another interesting one is Sound Actions. So you've got all these Sounds that you can make and you can take an Action. For instance the Click sound you can make that, you can have it Pinch so that instead of doing this you could actually say Click or make a click sound, really. You can have it actually tied to a bunch of different things that you could do here. So not just pinch. You can use Practice to actually practice things. So, for instance, I've found that the click sound I wasn't able to get a 100% of the time. But cluck was a little bit easier. You can see it gives you feedback there that you got it. So you can figure out which ones you can make easily and what they actually kind of sound like because you'll hear it. It will help you build those. You can do a lot more with just making sounds if you'd rather not be using your hands all the time. 

You also have an Accessibility shortcut just like on most other Apple devices. So the Accessibility shortcut is a triple click of the digital crown. You can set it to several things. If you set it to one thing the triple clicking will just do that one thing. If you select several things, like I have here, then three clicks and it gives you a choice of which one you want to use. 

You can take Screenshots on Apple Vision Pro just as easily as you could on any other device. It's the top button and the crown at the same time. Take a screenshot and it goes to your Photos App. You can also go to Control Center and here you can see there's Screen Recording which is what I'm using now to record this. So you can record your screen and get a video. Notice this Option next to it is Mirror My View and you can mirror what you're seeing with, say, an AppleTV or a Mac or anything that is an AirPlay Receiver. 

One of the things that bothers me about this interface is it's like being in a casino. You don't know what time it is. However, you can fix that with Widgetsmith, a third party app that you're probably familiar with because it's iPhone, iPad, and all of that. They actually have a Clock App in Widgetsmith so you can create different things, like little calendars and stuff. But if I put it there you can see the clock stays there and I can now tell the time. 

Now you can use this Disney+ app here or AppleTV+ to view all sorts of 3D content. AppleTV's got the immersive environments but also some 3D movies. Disney+ has a ton of 3D movies and they look fantastic. Way better than in the theater in my opinion. But you can also view other 3D content, stuff that predates the Apple Vision Pro. So, for instance, let's go into Safari here and there's a bunch of demos that Apple has at their Developer Site for Augmented Reality. These have been around for a few years. So you can look at one of these and instead of just being on the screen like a 2D, 3D model you can manipulate it actually appears 3D and you can actually manipulate it, this is an animated one so it's going to break apart and open up, and you can bring it closer and further and you can interact with it. It just sits on this platform. There's nothing special about this being at the Apple website. You can use 3D tools and create your own 3D models and put them on your website too. As a matter of fact here's a museum website and they've got a 3D model of an exhibit and you can just load this up. So as long as you're using Apple's 3D format for this you can stick your own 3D models up on a website and view them and, you know, you're seeing it 2D of course in this video but I'm seeing a real 3D object. It looks like it is right in front of me and it looks crystal clear. 

But Safari isn't the only place you can view these. You can also go to Freeform, for instance, and I've shown before how in Freeform you can have 3D models on your boards. When you're looking at them in Apple Vision Pro they look like real 3D. So that robot looks like it is actually coming out of the page for me and I can actually do the QuickLook view of it and move it all around. It's a crystal clear 3D view when you're looking in the Apple Vision Pro.

Now one of the most important tools that you might use on your Mac, or an iPhone or iPad, is the Markup Tools. It is not a specific app, of course. It is just something you find in different apps. You have all those Markup Tools here in Vision Pro as well. So I'm going to go to the Files App here and I'm going to open up a PDF. I've already drawn on this. But I can bring it closer to me and then I'm going to use this button here at the top, Switch to Markup Tools, and you can see it's very much like using the Markup Tools on the iPad. So I can select a type of tool or a color. Actually I want to bring it really close so I can touch it. I can draw on it. So, I can create arrows or whatever and you can even use the Plus button here and add a shape and then you can manipulate that shape with your finger like that. Or you can use the Look & Pinch on one of the spots there. So you have all these controls and it works really well to do markup inside a PDF whether it is here or you can do it in the Notes App, for instance. 

Now you may have noticed the Joshua Tree environment here which is a very realistic 3D looking environment that I'm in. I don't have it all the way around me. You can see my office if you go to the edges. I found it is really useful while you can dial it way back and see the area around you. It can be distracting. You can dial all the way in and then you've got just the environment everywhere. But a lot of times I find myself using a background just behind what's directly in front of me to create kind of this background that I can more easily see things like these icons and other things going on in other apps. 

Speaking of the environment if you choose one in particular, this Hawaiian volcanic crater, I don't know if you're going to be able to hear this very well but you can actually hear an echo if you say something loud. Now when you are using a window like this as a Mac user one of the things you may be able to do is minimize this or Hide this window. You really can't do that and you don't really need to because you can take it and put it anywhere you want. So I could put it here off to the side. It stays steady. It's off to the side there and I can bring it back at anytime I want. You can also layer windows on top of the other ones. So I can push this one to the back here and bring up the Controls and let's say I can bring that Safari window back up. You can see how it's on top like that. So I can bring Safari back or forward, move it off to the side like that. Most of the interactions I've seen from other people and, in truth what I'm doing, is mostly looking and tapping with two fingers. Sometimes touching objects though on the screen. 

I think we can have a clue of the future if we actually ;look at the DJ App and you go into that. You can go into a 3D room and it will actually change the interface. So that you've got three objects in front of you. You can control these pressing buttons, manipulating controls, even multiple ones at a time, like that. Stopping the record, lifting up the needle, even going over to the side here and selecting, like, a new record and placing it on another turntable here. So, this really feels better. It feels like you can really manipulate things in the real world and I even have these controls up here, special effects controls. I'd like to see a lot more interface that are using physical controls like this. 

But I have to say I think the real killer app right now is simply in Photos. You can view Panos and these are the panos you've already taken on your iPhone. I've taken many for years and I'm so glad I have because when you go and view one of these, you view it like this. But I can also go to the Immersive button, right there, and now it is all around me. It looks fantastic. I've been going back and spending a lot of time looking at my old panos. I'm so glad I took a lot of them in the past. You don't get that weird curve like you do when you're looking it on a flat screen. It really feels like you're there in that space again. Not only am I glad I took a lot of panos in the past, but I am sure going to be taking a lot of Panos from now on. Any time I see something picture worthy, from now on, even if I just take a regular photo, I'm just going to take a pano knowing that I can look at it like this inside of Vision Pro. 

Now, of course, right now we've got a lot more iPad apps than we do actual native of Vision Pro apps. So an important tip when using those is some of those can be used in different orientations. When that's the case you go to the top right hand corner, you can tap that button there and change the orientation. Which is going to be important since you can't really indicate any other way how you want to orient the kind of pseudo-iPad screen that you see in Vision Pro.

Now the first day I used it I got a little bit of eye strain and I have this idea that it was because everything was so bright. I got the same kind of eye strain whenever I, maybe, accidentally have a computer screen turned up too bright and I use it for a long time. So I simply went into Settings and then I went into Display right here and I was able to turn the brightness down. Now, of course, you can't see the difference here but it still looks great to me with it all the way down. But it definitely isn't as bright. Here it just seems there was a lot of light coming into my eyes. So I suggest maybe lowering the brightness or at least finding a level that's good for you. 

Now this being such a new platform of course you're going to have lots of apps that might have trouble. So you want to force quit an app. To force quit an app all you need to do is press the button and the crown at the same time. Press and Hold until you see this window appear. Then you get a window that you can select an application and force quit it. You also use the same technique to Shutdown Apple Vision Pro. I've seen people just disconnect power from it to turn it off. I like kind of to gracefully shutting it down. So I can do that and, you know, by the time I take it off and put it down it's probably already shutdown. So the way to do that is the same thing. Press the button and digital crown and you keep holding. Even after that window appears and then you go to Slide to Power Off. You can grab it and if I slid it all the Off it would turn itself off. So that's the graceful way to shut it down. 

So there's some of my tips I've got for using the Apple Vision Pro for just a few days. Let me know if you like this video and you want me to continue doing more videos on how to do things on the Apple Vision Pro. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.