The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office just granted Apple U.S. Patent No. 12,353,649, suggesting the company is thinking well beyond the iPad when it comes to the future of the Apple Pencil. Here are the details.
According to the filing, “INPUT DEVICE WITH OPTICAL SENSORS” (via Patently Apple), Apple has been exploring a stylus equipped with optical sensors that can track motion, orientation, and position in 3D space, without needing to touch a screen. That would allow users to draw on virtually any surface, or even just above it, within a short range.
And if that sounds familiar, that’s because it is. First, current Apple Pencils already detect tilt and pressure. And second, just last month at WWDC25, Apple showcased the Logitech Muse, a spatial stylus for Vision Pro that lets users sketch in the air.
The patent describes multiple methods for drawing without touching
Apple’s patent details two types of optical sensors that could be built into the stylus in a pretty similar way:
Optical flow sensors, which work a bit like optical mice by analyzing frame-to-frame changes in light to detect motion.Laser speckle flow sensors, which track how granular laser reflections shift as the stylus moves.
Laser speckle flow sensors, which track how granular laser reflections shift as the stylus moves.
As described in the patent, both systems can detect movement even when hovering above a surface (up to 100mm, or 3.94 inches), while also allowing the stylus to operate on non-touch-sensitive materials like wood or paper.
The patent also describes how a trackball might feed internal sensors
One version of the Pencil described in the patent features a trackball tip, which rolls as you move the stylus. But instead of using mechanical encoders (like those little internal wheels in traditional mice that detect ball rotation), Apple proposes using internal optical sensors to track the ball’s movement.
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