The HomePod of the future will read your shakes, waves and dance moves as gesture control

Apple submitted a new patent which will enable users to use a wider range of gestures in order to control their HomePod. The HomePod — especially the latest one — is already quite smart in terms of awareness, but Apple seems to want to take things to another level with future renditions.

The HomePod is currently capable of adjusting itself to match the soundscape of the room you’ve left it in. It’s always listening for voice control, and is capable of quickly connecting to other smart tech around your home. Thus far, pretty impressive, albeit if variants of these features are already on offer from other manufacturers, like Samsung or Google.

However, according to this new patent submission, which AppleInsider noted on, the next step is to enable the HomePod to detect gestures. The patent is titled “Multi Media Computing Or Entertainment System For Responding To User Presence And Activity” — rolls of the tongue, yep — and it basically boils down to monitoring users around the HomePod.

Some of the example gestures given in the patent include detection of waving, other hand gestures or entering and exiting rooms. Let’s take the last in the list and use it for a simple example: if you set it up so, the HomePod will be able to stop playing music as soon as it detects that everyone has left the room. Neat!