LOS ANGELES — Let’s escort the elephant out of the room right away: Yes, you can watch all kinds of porn on Apple Vision Pro. Yes, right now. Yes, both 2D porn and 180-degree/200-degree immersive VR porn.
Those sensationalist mainstream headlines quoting a random Redditor about AVP being a “$3,500 chastity belt”? Misleading at best — and really utter BS, since a simple Google will show you how to adjust a few settings to enable Safari to play VR content.
With that out of the way, let’s delve into the present and potential future of Apple Vision Pro when it comes to adult content.
Full disclosure: I’m not a tech or VR specialist. Instead, I represent an average target market for AVP — neither technophobe nor zealous booster. I am familiar and generally content with the Apple ecosystem and interfaces. I’m an early-ish adopter of new tech, usually within a year or so of release after prices adjust down to a working person’s budget. I’m not afraid to tinker a bit with software to find what I’m looking for, but I also don’t care to finely customize every device or app to get through technical hurdles.
So, let me walk you through how someone like me, and maybe like you, can access adult content on Apple Vision Pro in five easy steps.
Five Steps to Apple Vision Pro Porn
- Acquire the device — or if you work at XBIZ, get them to acquire it and loan it to you.
- Spend 30-45 minutes going through the setup, creating your avatar, teaching the device where your eyes and hands are, etc.
- Press the “digital crown” button on the goggles — the device looks remarkably like ski goggles — and app icons appear in front of you. At this point you immediately become aware of AVP’s most innovative feature: Apple’s sleek take on “augmented reality.” AR keeps you immersed in the real world through a state-of-the-art, real-time video feed of whatever is around you, while simultaneously displaying a virtual dashboard within which apps appear in front of whatever you’re looking at.
- OK, back to finding porn. Aim your eyes at the Safari browser icon — for now, Apple’s Safari is the only browser fully compatible with AVP — and then lightly tap your thumb and index finger together. This is the most common and useful haptics gesture of Apple Vision Pro, equivalent to a mouse or trackpad click. This is how you select things, close windows, etc. in the virtual screens on which most of the non-immersive actions of the experience take place.
- A browser window opens. Aim your eyes at the URL bar and a virtual keyboard appears in front of you. Now it’s time to choose your own porn adventure. Just like on a laptop or phone, you can surf to your favorite paysite, whether 2D or VR, or just Google your favorite performer and hit the video tab — whatever floats your erotic boat.
And just like that, boom! Porn. Yes, actual porny porn on your Apple Vision Pro. Less than an hour after opening the box.
The 2D Porn Experience on Apple Vision Pro
Let’s start with the simplest way to watch adult content on Apple Vision Pro: via free tube sites like Pornhub, XVideos and xHamster.
As noted above, Apple Vision Pro’s Safari browser works exactly like it does on your desktop, laptop or phone. As long as you don’t have any porn filters installed — or live in one of the U.S. states that have passed impractical age verification laws, causing adult content platforms to geoblock them — you should be able to head over to your favorite tube site and pick any video from their vast selection. Again, you just look at a video thumbnail, lightly tap your thumb and index finger together, and you’re good to go.
Here’s where the source material becomes a factor. Adult videos come in a variety of resolutions and formats, from ultra-amateur phone recordings, to vintage VHS content, to the latest iteration of hi-def in 4K and beyond. In the virtual Safari window, you’re going to see it in whatever definition it was recorded and/or uploaded, of course. The contrast between the not-so-sharp feed of your physical environment, and the ultra-high resolution of the Safari user interface, can be jarring.
To avoid this distracting contrast, you can easily make the video full-frame. This leaves you with just your IRL background and one large digital screen in front of you, displaying the video. I expect this to become the preferred way to watch 2D adult content.
The experience entirely satisfies one of the main impulses to watch porn: voyeurism. Although Apple Vision Pro — as the latest and sleekest version of humanity’s journey to virtual reality — is being heralded for its immersive features, the “being there” or “alternate reality” desire is fundamentally different from the voyeuristic impulse that has driven 2D erotic content since the days of cave paintings. “Flat” porn experienced through Apple Vision Pro delivers that basic human sexual experience of watching, learning from and being aroused by the sexual activity of others.
A note about sound. Apple Vision Pro delivers sound through its headband, which produces very realistic sound for the wearer, but also sound leakage that others can hear. For porn, or any other use that requires privacy, pairing AVP with Bluetooth headphones is a must.
Porn Paysites and Apple Vision Pro
All of the above considerations about the tube site experience also apply to paysites, with one important addition: entering your credentials.
Apple Vision Pro is fully integrated with the Apple ecosystem, so if you are using a universal Apple ID across all your devices, and have saved your passwords in Safari, then it is pretty painless to log into your favorite paysites.
If you have not done that, the process of entering passwords through Apple Vision Pro’s interface can be annoying. This is a problem common to all VR devices, especially if you have to get past CAPTCHA.
I sampled content from several leading paysites and the 2D experience was smooth and impressive, like what I described above for tube sites.
For VR porn content, however, the experience can get frustrating.
VR Porn and Apple Vision Pro
Yes, as I said at the beginning, you 100% can experience immersive “3D” VR porn with Apple Vision Pro today.
First, before you open Safari, you must enable four settings for WebXR that are hidden fairly deep within Settings. Click here for step-by-step instructions on how to enable those settings.
All the VR porn sites I tested utilize WebXR, but seconds after starting their videos, almost all of them crashed immediately, some with the sound still playing. Though by the time you read this, they may have fixed those bugs.
The exception was SexLikeReal, on which I was able to experience 180-degree immersive content, with full "3D" POV experience.
I sampled several VR videos on the site, all of them created and optimized for other headsets, and they all worked with Apple Vision Pro. Again, the resolution can vary widely depending on the specs of the original content. But the immersive experiences were there: full-on POV, intimate performances with eye contact, ASMR audio and that "you are there" feeling, all available right now through AVP.
The only slight annoyance is that the UI/UX for WebXR content is unlike Apple Vision Pro’s smooth eye-and-fingertapping proprietary interface, making selecting, pressing play and pause, and fast-forwarding imprecise tasks interrupting the immersive erotic experience.
Still, even when accessing pre-AVP SexLikeReal VR content produced within the last year, the experience of having an intensely seductive virtual performer sitting on my lap was impressive. It seemed like the current best-case scenario for VR content, heading into the “spatial computing” age that this device is surely inaugurating.
AVP-Style Spatial Porn is Coming
As I’ve mentioned, existing 2D and VR content functions well with the high-end capabilities of Apple Vision Pro. But that’s already the past as of this week: watching current POV VR content felt to me like being in 1926 and enjoying a really great silent movie knowing that the talkies are just around the corner.
What are the talkies in this analogy? Spatial porn. The term is still not totally accepted outside of specialist techie circles, but the concept is already here: next-level immersion. The kind of totally sharp, totally sound-designed, you-are-there stuff that has been the subject of many a science-fiction fantasy for decades, if not centuries.
Two particular features of Apple Vision Pro indicate to me what is going to happen with spatial porn — or “real 3D,” or “fully immersive” or whatever we all eventually agree to call this thing.
The Apple Vision Pro function called “Environments” entirely replaces your IRL video feed with a different environment, so your virtual screen is not floating in your living room or wherever you are, but within a hyperrealistic, 360-degree rendering of an epic mountainscape, or a volcano or… the Moon. The moonscape environment was the most impressive to me — you are looking around an endless, barren, monochrome expanse of dust and rocks. Your POV becomes that of Doctor Manhattan from “Watchmen” pondering the pettiness of those silly humans. You can also see your own IRL hands in front of you.
There’s also a demo-type experience called “Encounter Dinosaurs,” where you’re plopped into a prehistoric landscape where enormous, hyperrealistic ancient reptiles take an interest in you and “break the fourth wall” by becoming fully 3D and getting really close to your face, apparently to smell you.
So, porn: If you put the “you’re there”-ness of the moonscape and “Encounter Dinosaurs” together and factor in a sexual scenario, it’s a no-brainer. This is the immersive experience people have been theorizing for years. It’s here, if you just swap the moonscape for wherever you choose and swap the dinosaurs for your preferred object of desire.
The contrast between a porn version of that type of environments/experience, and traditional VR content, is the difference between silent film and the talkies. Even the conception of VR and AR experiences portrayed in 2017’s “Blade Runner 2049” is already dated. Let’s be real here: If Apple Vision Pro is where we are at 2024, we cannot even fathom the state of the art for 2049.
There’s a big catch, though: Apple’s long-held anti-porn stance. The moonscape and dinosaur demo were produced with proprietary, “closed ecosystem” technology. I can't imagine Apple allowing that tech to be used for sexual content.
Making Porn With Apple Vision Pro’s Camera
Everything above refers to experiencing adult content through Apple Vision Pro. But what about making adult content with it, such as spatial porn content?
If you haven’t kept up with the news, Apple Vision Pro is equipped with a 3D camera, a feature that is also included in the iPhone 15.
Do I need to spell it out? People are already making spatial porn with it for sure.
Remember, photography was invented in 1839. Nudes were invented in 1839 plus 10 minutes. Same for videotape; watch Paul Schrader’s 2002 movie “Auto Focus.” Same for phones with video. AVP has been out for a few days and I bet there’s already enough spatial porn produced to make a Utah politician try to outlaw the device.
The catch? It lives in Apple Vision Pro, so while you can freely transfer/sell the video files like you can with regular video clips, only someone else who has Apple Vision Pro can experience them.
The Future of Camming in the Fully Immersive Era
Apple Vision Pro is bound to be a game changer for livestreaming. If you’ve read this far, I feel I don’t even have to explain why. Consider everything I’ve said about the next-level intimacy of VR content plus the moonscape/dinosaur immersion, add in thousands upon thousands of hot young women and men and enbies livestreaming, and do the math. I know the word “disruptive” was turned into a cliché by tech bros years ago, but AVP-style technology is bound to shake up camming.
But let’s talk about Alicia Keys for a minute.
Apple Vision Pro comes with a custom version of the Apple TV app, through which it offers mainstream 3D and IMAX movies, regular 2D movies and several demos especially created to show off the device.
One of the demos is a “you’re there” immersive music session with Alicia Keys and her musicians performing three of her hits in an intimate setting.
Keys is, of course, a universally recognized, sublime singer, songwriter and performer. Her music is transcendent and being able to be “right there” immersed in one of her sessions is a special treat. So please forgive me if I seem to be objectifying Ms. Keys for a second. I have nothing but respect and admiration for her artistry, but that is not why I’m bringing up her APV demo for this article.
I hope you don’t think it is out of place to point out that Alicia Keys — objectively speaking — is also a very attractive woman. In the session, she’s wearing casual clothes that happen to be tight on her, and she engages with the 3D spatial camera directly, making eye contact, getting close to it — that is, to you, when you’re viewing it through the headset.
I want to repeat that this demo is not meant to be sexual — she’s just singing her amazing songs. But given that Apple has outlawed overt sexual material from its device, the Alicia Keys demo offers the clearest nonporn, nonsexual example of how the super-hi-res, hyperrealistic, immersive spatial experience could be utilized for camming. The “you are there”-ness is uncanny. You’ve never seen anything like it.
Apple’s Long-Held Anti-Porn Stance and the Future of Apple Vision Pro
It seems unlikely that Apple will ever revise its “no porn” blanket ban for its App Store, so don't expect to see AVP apps offering sexually explicit spatial, fully immersive content.
Safari does not automatically block adult content — although as I mentioned, more and more U.S. states are creating liability that forces individual websites to self-censor through geoblocking — so there are still ways to monetize sexually explicit material suited for Apple Vision Pro through the web.
And yes, it bears mentioning the obvious: Heavy-hitter Apple competitors like Google and Meta’s Quest are taking copious notes on the good, the bad and the buggy about Apple Vision Pro. So expect the market to heat up as more advanced headsets are introduced, closing the gap between AVP and competing devices.
Other Notes, Issues, Conjectures About Apple Vision Pro
Here are some other interesting notes and issues about Apple Vision Pro as it applies to experiencing adult content:
- OK, this is kind of a biggie, and it’s also sort of funny. Remember the basic thumb-and-index finger gesture that selects and sometimes pops up menus? Do it now and see the circle your two fingers make. Now imagine you’re a person with a penis, masturbating to porn — with your thumb and index finger touching. The AVP gets really confused. Needless to say, this particular haptic is problematic for penis owners who wish to masturbate while interacting with AVP.
- Apple Vision Pro’s main uses have to do with mixed reality (MR) — the virtual screen floating in front of your environment — or with full immersion, as in the moonscape/dinosaur/Alicia Keys samples. AVP is also ideal for AR, which features less complex interaction with digital elements than you get in MR, but MR and spatial content are being emphasized. A cool example of AR comes at the beginning of the “Encounter Dinosaurs” experience, when a butterfly lands on the user's hand right before their IRL environment switches to the immersive one. Some porn companies have extolled the potential of AR for years — “You can have your favorite porn star in your own bedroom!” — but adult companies would first need to crack the Apple ecosystem’s anti-porn bias.
- Right now, Apple Vision Pro does not offer digital optical correction for people who have less-than-perfect vision. This seems like an obvious area for development, as users could theoretically link the device to their optometrist’s prescription to implement a correction. Currently, AVP users cannot wear prescription glasses while wearing the device, although Apple sells physical corrective lenses separately.
- For adult industry professionals, a big benefit of Apple Vision Pro’s mixed-reality interface is the ability to do work in total privacy — remember: always with your headphones on — in public places where accessing porn websites may be problematic.
- Adult gaming and integration with sexual health devices — the “teledildonics” that used to fascinate mainstream media in the early 2000s — are two areas where Apple Vision Pro-style technology will certainly disrupt existing paths of development.
We will have to wait to experience the many ways in which AVP adult content will ultimately be shared and monetized outside of the Apple ecosystem, although that sound you hear is thousands of enterprising folks reverse-engineering to bypass hurdles.
