11 Productivity Hacks for the Apple Vision Pro

One week down with the Vision Pro and my life will never be the same…

Me and the Vision Pro.

It’s April 2024 and I finally got my hands on this masterpiece of a device. I remember last year when it was first announced. The hype was very real; seamlessly blurring the lines of the digital world and reality seemed like a lofty goal, even for Apple. But oh boy have they delivered. This headset has completely changed the way I think about my workflow. While I am still learning new features each day — enjoy a preliminary list of my favorite productivity hacks thus far.

1. Apple Pencil for annotating. It is the perfect amalgamation of flexibility from the iPad with a structured interface akin to macOS. Being able to scribble notes anywhere and have them saved in place has skyrocketed made my memory retention. It’s also worth noting that the latest Apple Pencil enables two options for transcribing. You can either press your Pencil against a surface or gently squeeze while gesturing your strokes in the air. Your eyes will direct the cursor, but will remain in it’s last location with one moderate squeeze. I found this to be perfect when taking notes in the margins of a page while I continued reading. It’s an added bonus that visionOS can neatly align my writing or convert it into text altogether.
2. Spotlight mode. This has been my go-to setting for staying focused. Everything aside from your primary browser window is pure darkness. It carries a similar feeling to being in a movie, but no ‘Exit’ sign toward the front — it’s great. Reducing that unnecessary stimuli has helped me stay focused than I was expecting. Worried about staying in-touch with the real world? Apple has it figured out. If someone is approaching you, a white aura will get bigger and more intense before ultimately displaying the person when they’re close. What’s ‘close’ you ask? Apple solved this too. Whether you’re sitting in a small bedroom or someone is entering your office 20-feet away — this distance is adjustable.
3. Smart noise reduction. Noise cancellation to the next level. Thanks to Vision Pro’s next generation connectivity, it monitors your environment like never before. It leverages AI to better predict then negate the sounds around you. This applies to ordinary background conversation based on Apple’s advanced language learning model and is particularly optimized to dampen the volume of songs (in Apple’s archives). I expect this feature will roll out to the AirPods product line soon. If you’re interested in how this technology works, it’s pretty interesting — see here.
4. Circadian mode. Keeping your body’s internal clock calibrated will be an increasingly important priority as users will have less of a need to leave their homes (particularly for work). As a result, especially if you’re not exposed to sunlight — your sleep cycle can be negatively affected. However, by turning on ‘Circadian mode’ you can be exposed to artificial light that will align with sunrise and sunset. This is accomplished through an adjustment of display brightness or even the virtual placement of a window with appropriate lighting. While I have not traveled in the past week, this is extremely helpful for mitigating jet lag. Whether you want to gradually acclimate to a different timezone before you leave or return to your standard sleep cycle faster once you return — both applications have been proven to be really effective.
5. Snippets. See a quote you want to remember or how about a clip you want to show a friend? A new application called ‘Snippets’ allows you to save anything quickly and file down in an organized folder structure. You can also use this to select a portion of a window for a screenshot or select a a clip from a video. The gestures are oddly intuitive too. Highlight text with your pointer finger, twist your two fingers, and ‘throw’ it to the side to effortlessly add them into your snippets vault. At a later point, you can organize your queue of snippets, as needed, by your preference. The days of pausing what you’re doing to engage in an inefficient number of clicks to save down anything are over.
6. Backdrop hue. If you don’t want to erase everything not in direct focus with Spotlight mode, there is another similar option. You can change the background outside of your focal window to be grayscale or of a muted color to maximize focus on the window at center stage. I found myself using this feature more when in a public setting. It can be a bit unnerving if people may be looking at you and your stuff — so this gave me a bit more peace of mind.
7. Virtual spaces. Thought Apple’s desktop backgrounds were cool? They’ve one-upped themselves. Built-in (even without any internet connection), you can access a number of minimally distracting, fully-virtual workspaces. When you don’t feel like being in your bedroom, transport to a small private office (which you can customize), the wilderness (even with animals walking by), or even a Starbucks (background chatting included). I think I’ll probably cancel my WeWork membership. I had originally signed up to it for a sense of community and to meet new people, but this was less the case than I expected. While it seems Apple is trying to stay clear of Meta’s approach to VR with cheezy avatars, there’s plans for Apple to make the experience more social. If you’re interested in what Zuck has to say about the Vision Pro, including “every demo that they showed was a person sitting on a couch by themself”, check out an article by The Verge here.
8. Nimble mode. Given the Vision Pro’s ability to block out distraction, your focus will be concentrated on a single point in a room for longer. This is a huge adjustment from thousands of years of evolution where humans are designed to be acutely aware of their full surroundings. Those who weren’t — probably were picked off by tigers. Fortunately, to hopefully speak on behalf of both of us, we no longer have that issue. But a problem that does plague us is sore muscles if we don’t keep active. A stiff neck can sometimes be a recurring challenge during periods of long usage for some users. However, Apple knew this before us and came up with a solution. If the Vision Pro senses your head or eye movement have been limited — the interface will prompt you to follow some soft stretching or encourage varied movement through shifting your display around your peripheral view. Not to mention, I have my settings enabled so this is only brought to my attention after my deep think takes a rest as to not be an interruption.
9. Proximity Shareplay. In my opinion, this is one of the coolest aspects of the headset that really makes it feel like magic. Early on, it was a priority of Apple for a user to be able to do almost anything in a Vision Pro that would be done in their daily life. The less you need to take off the headset — the more value it can provide to you. Therefore, the ability to intertwine people around you (not wearing a Vision Pro) into the content you are being displayed is just as important as accommodating you. Let’s say you are on a call/FaceTime, but want to loop in someone in the room or show someone a presentation — you can with Proximity Shareplay. Leveraging the same “Precision Finding” technology with the Airtag, you can take whatever content you are being displayed and “throw” it with your hand toward another Apple device to stream for someone else too. This is particularly convenient with Apple’s recently released Smart Home Display.
10. Deskview. Always looking up at a big screen is not always necessary and can lead to fatigue (thus, lack of focus). Therefore — to the pleasant surprise of all users, they recently a new format to display information: Deskview. When doing certain types of work, such as writing long-form text, feeling like you’re in a movie theater is not necessary. With this feature you can simply sit down at a table and have your entire desk set-up in front of you. Whether’s it’s papers on the table that you can move around, a virtual two-monitor set up, or even various colored pens scattered around the surface — you can customize it to your
11. Finger pencil. Or better yet, THE finger pencil. This is easily one of my favorite new features of the headset and effectively gives you a crude, less accurate version of an Apple pencil that never needs charging. (Unless you consider food..or calories, to be the energy…anyways, I digress). Doodling is super fun and works best when you’re moving your hand along a flat surface in front of you. Better yet, with Deskview enabled, when you look down onto a tabletop then your canvas moves too. The finger painting and sandcastle building (in 3D!) mediums are extremely surreal, but the lack of haptic feedback was a constant reminder I was in a virtual space even though my eyes told me otherwise. This Finger pencil in Freeform makes for a perfect break-time destresser before jumping back into work mode.

In summary, the Apple Vision Pro is truly mind-blowing. It’s hard for me to believe that in April 2024 humanity has progressed so quickly from the year 2007 when the first iPhone was debuted. I’ve found that in the last week my productivity has become an order of magnitude more efficient.

I also absolutely love how this headset is so integrated into my ecosystem of other products. Most notably, I really like how the haptic feedback from my Apple Watch Series 9 is synchronized with my actions while wearing the Vision Pro. When I am not wearing my watch, I find that a piece of the experience is missing and at times I need to confirm that I did indeed perform an action (if the visual feedback isn’t apparent enough — like saving a document). I am looking forward to the Apple Fingertips coming out later this year to really feel like I am tapping a button.

In case you’ve gotten this far — I suggest you follow my Medium to stick around. More content like this coming soon. I absolutely love technology, futurism, and Apple products — this was a lot of fun for me to think up and will be doing more of it.

Also, since my Apple Car arrived this week too, I think I’ll publish some thoughts on that next…

If you enjoyed this, check out my other two posts on the Vision Pro:

“5 Existential Questions for the Vision Pro (to save humanity)”

“11 Futuristic Ideas for the Vision Pro (to change the world)”