When I tried Meta’s new Ray-Ban Display—the company’s first pair of smart glasses with a screen in them—my first thought was: these are going to be big. And my second thought was: how the hell are these going to work? As great as smart glasses could be for replacing your phone in theory, there are a lot of snags one can encounter on that road to doing so.
One of those snags, for example, is Apple’s iOS. In smart glasses with a display, messaging is a major part of the appeal. The ability to quickly see and respond to someone makes them as useful a companion to your phone as a smartwatch, if not more useful. The problem is, not every company we buy gadgets from (ahem, Apple) plays nice. That has meant no real integration between Apple’s Messages app in iOS and Ray-Ban Meta AI smart glasses. In short, you can’t listen to and respond to text messages on Meta’s smart glasses if you’re not using WhatsApp. That’s also why when I tried the Meta Ray-Ban Display, I was excited by what Meta seemed to be suggesting.
See Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 at Amazon
Both in a demo and in its press materials, Meta suggested that you will be able to “privately view and reply to messages in… iOS and Android” with its new display glasses. Finally, right? The one big feature that Ray-Ban Meta AI smart glasses were missing. Except… that may not be true. According to Meta’s CTO, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, who recently held a Q&A on Instagram after Meta Connect, Meta is still shut out from integrating Messages in a real way. Here’s what he said:
“Right now it’s Messenger and WhatsApp, which obviously are, incredibly popular global messaging platforms. We’d love to expand and do more… So, you know, tell your friendly neighborhood Apple employee to build the right permissions and access.”
That feels like a pretty far cry from being able to “privately view and reply to messages in… iOS and Android.” Gizmodo reached out to Meta for clarification, but I’ve yet to hear back as of publication. Maybe Boz just means that the Messages app can’t work fully on the smart glasses? That’s what I’m hoping, at least, but I’m not optimistic that’s the case. Current-gen Ray-Bans without a display (the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2) also can’t read and reply to messages in iOS or Android, and unless Meta made some breakthrough with Apple and Android, I don’t see why the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses would be any different.
It’s sounding like Meta Ray-Ban Display could have the same limited messaging functionality as Fitbits and any smartwatches that Wear OS or another software platform. Apple doesn’t allow smartwatches that aren’t its own Apple Watches to send replies to messages, only receive them via a paired iPhone, and even that’s often limited or hit or miss. Though, that may change. iOS 26.1 code (via Macworld) suggests that Apple may add a “Notification Forwarding” feature that would allow notifications, like messages, to show up on third-party smartwatches. There’s no mention of allowing replies to iMessages.
The thing is, if Meta’s smart glasses can’t do any of that stuff, it wouldn’t really be its fault. Apple has always been notoriously prickly in giving non-Apple hardware privileges to use its software and features (see every debate over green bubbles for context on that). So, as much as Meta would love to be able to let users of its smart glasses reply to messages sent to them via iOS, it’s out of their hands for now. However, it would be Meta’s fault for suggesting that its smart glasses can read and reply to iMessages if that’s not the case.
Maybe it won’t matter in the end—the rest of the world outside of the U.S. uses third-party apps like WhatsApp and WeChat all the time, and they wouldn’t think twice about buying a device that lacks iOS or iMessage integration. But, there’s also a chance that, to lots of people in the U.S., it would be a big deal, meaning Meta has a massive messaging problem, both literal and figurative. We’ll be sure to update you as soon as we know more.
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