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Meta announced its Connect 2026 conference will run September 23-24, where it plans to showcase advances in AI, smart glasses and VR. The event is free to watch via livestream after registering on Meta's website or through the Meta for Developers Facebook page, with sessions starting September 23 at 7PM ET and continuing September 24 at 1PM ET.
Vonder, a new eyewear brand from the founders of XR company Viture, has unveiled its first collection of smart glasses built around privacy rather than cameras or screens. The glasses come in six frame styles, three colors, and can be made with prescription lenses, weighing under 30 grams. Pre-orders open September 28, 2026, starting at $299, with shipping planned for November.
EssilorLuxottica has released the Nuance Audio Plus, an upgraded version of its FDA-cleared over-the-counter hearing aid glasses that look like ordinary eyewear. The new model adds sharper voice clarity in noisy settings, extra physical controls on the frame, and up to 10 hours of battery life, and comes in three frame styles and five colors starting at $829. The original Nuance Audio glasses, priced from $699, will continue to be sold alongside the new Plus version.
Counterpoint Research reports that global AI glasses shipments grew 263% year over year in the first half of 2026, driven largely by cheaper display-less models like Ray-Ban Meta AI Glasses, which made up 96% of all shipments. Meta captured 94% of that display-less segment, while AR-enabled glasses, though still a small niche, saw shipments jump 449% year over year, led by Rokid ahead of Meta.
Counterpoint Research reports that global shipments of display-less AI glasses rose 263% year over year in the first half of 2026, with Meta's Ray-Ban partnership capturing 94% of the segment. Xiaomi and Alibaba each held just 1% market share, while North America and Western Europe together accounted for nearly 80% of total shipments.
A new app called ZuckOff scans nearby Bluetooth signals to alert users when smart camera glasses like Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta, or Snap Spectacles are in the vicinity. The app processes everything locally on the phone, requires no account, and lets users log all detected devices, mark their own glasses to silence alerts, and export scan history as CSV. It also sells branded merchandise through Fourthwall to help fund development.
Polish developer Pawel Szydlowski built ZuckOff, a free Bluetooth scanning app that identifies nearby smart glasses from Meta and Snap by matching device signals to fingerprints he compiled from purchased hardware. The app has drawn over 5,000 downloads on Apple's App Store and 1,000 on Google Play within its first month.
Meta is expected to unveil a new pair of smart glasses at Connect 2026 that drop cameras entirely, relying instead on added microphones for voice interaction with its AI assistant. The frames are said to come in two styles and will be slimmer, resembling regular eyewear, according to reports ahead of the event.
Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses are increasingly being nicknamed 'perv glasses' due to misuse by people secretly filming others in public, echoing the 'Glasshole' stigma that doomed Google Glass in 2014. The author says this backlash has changed their own stance, now favoring reports that Apple's rumored smart glasses, expected next year, might launch without photo or video recording capability.
Snap allowed journalists to try its upcoming consumer AR glasses, called Specs, which will retail for $2,195 and launch this fall. The chunky, standalone glasses run without a phone or external battery and enable shared augmented reality experiences, such as two wearers playing a virtual game of dominoes together on a real table.
Meta is reportedly developing a new line of smart glasses, dubbed Luna, that will not include cameras, according to The Information. The devices, expected to launch in October in Clubmaster and Burbank styles, will feature six microphones and ear-facing speakers so users can talk to Meta's AI assistant via a side button, but will lack the recording capability found in Meta's Ray-Ban glasses.
Polish developer Pawel Szydlowski released a free app, ZuckOff, that scans Bluetooth signals to alert users when Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta, or Snap Spectacles smart glasses are nearby. Launched in August, it has been downloaded over 5,000 times on iOS and 1,000 times on Android, built from a database of device fingerprints Szydlowski compiled by purchasing and testing the hardware himself.