The Apple Vision Pro will have a Guest mode and Travel mode. Great. Why?

Well, now that the Galaxy S24 Unpacked event is done, we can take a breather before moving on to being hyped about the Vision Pro. Honestly, it feels a bit odd to know that in less than a month we’ll know how well the Vision Pro fares against the competition in the best VR headsets ranking.

But here’s the drill: it may not even fit there. After all, Apple wants us to refer to the thing as a “spatial computer”, which further reinforces the idea that it’s unlike anything we’ve seen before. Sure, the Quest 3 can do mixed-reality. But the Vision Pro approaches the concept in a completely different way.

But even if Apple wants to market the Vision Pro to high-end professionals, it can’t evade the simple truth: humans are social creatures. We’ve got families and we’ve got friends, and both parties are bound to react with “No way!!” upon seeing a Vision Pro at your home.

Hence: Guest mode and Travel mode. Maybe. We don’t know yet.



You read that right: we’ve got no idea what these two modes actually are and we’re likely to find out only after the headset has been released. That being said, what we can do is perform a bit of comparative analysis to figure out if we can maybe guess what the features will be.

Guest mode seems to be easier to imagine in a practical sense. After all, the Vision Pro is marketed to work on a per-person basis, meaning that it’s fitted to one unique human and its capabilities are locked behind said human’s peepers.

But, again: someone is bound to ask “Can I put it on” in a context, where you just shouldn’t refuse.

Hence: Guest mode. It will probably allow you to set up which files and apps you’d like to share with anyone who puts the headset on, but isn’t exactly you. The Quest series of headsets have a similar feature and can even allow you to set up additional profiles on a given headset, which I’m sure would be really appreciated for the Vision Pro too.

RoadToVR has a really cool theory that Guest mode might actually kick in automatically, as soon as it senses that someone else has put on the headset. A pretty Apple way of doing things for sure. Will that end up being the case? Time will tell.

But before that: Travel mode. Apple says that this one is a special mode, which allows you to use the Vision Pro while traveling. “But wait, what would stop me?” I hear you ask. Well, the headset is equipped with all sorts of sensors, so the movement from a plane or car is bound to mess those up, resulting in a pretty spectacular experience. In a bad way.

That being said, Apple could go about developing such a feature through a myriad of ways, so what might end up being the case is still… Up in the air. Ha! (imagine that meme with the smiling husky)

Right now, we’re sure of two things: we’re bound to find out more details about the Vision Pro as its release date of February 2 draws near. And the other being: we’ll likely figure out what all of them mean only after said that has come and gone, and maybe after we’ve tried the spatial computer for ourselves.