Apple Leaks Camera-Equipped AirPods in macOS Tahoe Update

A demo video buried in the macOS Tahoe 26.7 release candidate shows Apple's rumored camera-equipped AirPods running Visual Intelligence, as the company prepares launch materials for the new hardware.

A demo video buried inside the macOS Tahoe 26.7 release candidate appears to offer the first real look at Apple's long-rumored camera-equipped AirPods.

The clip, spotted by MacRumors, shows a person holding up a book so the camera embedded in the earbuds can read the title before turning to Siri with a question about it. "With Visual Intelligence, your world becomes savable. See something you like? Just ask me to save it for later," a voiceover says — a preview of how the earbuds will feed visual context to Siri so users can ask about their surroundings or save what they're looking at.

Internally the device carries the codename B790 and ships with a dedicated Visual Intelligence setup flow. If hair happens to cover the earbuds, users are nudged with a prompt: "To get the most accurate information about things in your environment, make sure AirPods are not covered."

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has previously reported the camera AirPods could launch as soon as September, potentially arriving alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and Apple's foldable iPhone Ultra.

Sources: MacRumors | TechCrunch | 9to5Mac