First announced at Google I/O 2025, Google and Xreal returned to the developer conference to announce that their jointly created “Project Aura” XR smart glasses are real and coming soon. Google didn’t share a release date or pricing information, but said the XR smart glasses would have a global launch in 2026. Project Aura runs on Google’s Android XR platform and developers will soon have a chance to create XR experiences for the device via the Android XR Developer Catalyst Program. Some demos that Google is highlighting at I/O include immersive versions of Google Maps, VR YouTube videos at 180- and 360-degrees, a vibe-coded painting app, and “a massive screen viewing and a mini-screen experience fit for multitasking across Project Aura’s extended reality canvas.” Xreal defines Project Aura as an “optical-see-through” device, meaning it’s a pair of smart glasses with high-res screens and a wide field of view. This is optically different from a pair of display-equipped smart glasses like the Meta Ray-Ban Display, which use a waveguide to essentially beam pixels into a tiny transparent screen embedded into one of the lenses.
I’ll get a chance to try out Project Aura later today after the keynote, but I’m expecting Project Aura to sit somewhere between the Meta Ray-Ban Display and Apple Vision Pro. The compact and open design means you likely won’t get the same kind of immersion as a more enclosed XR headset, but the higher-resolution screens should provide both more clarity and a larger display for “spatial computing.”
