It's been a busy week for rumors surrounding Apple's upcoming AirPods with cameras. The fun started on Monday, when a video in a macOS 26.7 beta showing off AirPods with cameras was discovered. In the video, a person wearing AirPods Pro holds up a book and asks Siri to remember that book using Visual Intelligence. The AirPods Pro with cameras look nearly identical to the existing AirPods Pro 3.

Beyond the video, macOS 26.7 includes plenty of code references to AirPods with cameras, with more details on how they will work. According to code viewed by 9to5Mac, Apple will use a new Accessory Sensor Mgrd framework to control image capture. Each AirPod Pro bud has its own camera, referred to as the "Kino Sensor," and they act as a pair to take pictures simultaneously.

There are two capture modes: active and passive. Active mode captures images from each bud or continuously sends images at a specified rate. The active capture mode starts with a 640×640 capture and returns a processed 1024×1024 image. Passive mode supports environmental awareness with conditions like ambient speech, audio scene change, and head rotation.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported that AirPods with cameras remain on track for a 2027 launch. There are two versions in development: B790 (modified AirPods Pro 3 with cameras) and B798 (new generation with cameras). The cameras won't take photos or videos but will scan the environment to provide context to Siri and other AI tools.