As momentous as it was for Meta to shove a display inside its smart glasses with the Meta Ray-Ban Display, whatever excitement the hardware generated was betrayed by the software side of things. The fact is, there just weren’t a ton of apps to use inside the company’s $800 smart glasses at launch, though things might finally be rounding the corner.
Meta has opened up the Ray-Ban Display, which means developers can now make web apps that use the screen and the Neural Band, and launch them on the smart glasses via a URL. To be clear, this is for developers at the moment, but the early results are definitely interesting, and they’re a good sign for anyone who is left wanting for more from their pricey smart glasses. If you’re into early adoption, you can enable Meta’s developer mode on your Ray-Ban Display and start messing around yourself, but any apps you can get access to (again, you’ll need the URL from the developer) will likely be a work in progress.
The gap between idea and prototype has never been smaller. Add glasses and inputs like the Neural Band, and it feels like the early days of building in a way we haven't seen in over a decade.
We're rolling out web apps and a mobile SDK on Meta Ray-Ban Display. Developer Preview… pic.twitter.com/OlDayAkozd
— Boz (@boztank) May 14, 2026
Meta’s CTO, Andrew Bosworth, showcased one example app, “Darkroom Buddy,” that walks users through a film development process, which, in theory, could be useful, especially for people who are just learning. The video above shows how the screen inside the Meta Ray-Ban Display can hold your hand through the timing and method. Whether the app works well is anyone’s guess, but having a hands-free readout does make a lot of sense for things like film development.
There’s also an early example of how YouTube could look on the Meta Ray-Ban Display, which, I assume, would speak to most people who own the smart glasses, since watching videos might be the one thing that still unites us all. Obviously, this is just a first look at the experience, and given my experience with the Meta Ray-Ban Display, I wouldn’t expect it to look quite so clean when it’s being blasted onto your real eyeballs.
Here’s a first look at watching YouTube videos on the Meta Ray-Ban Display smart glasses pic.twitter.com/6uUdp8xQJw
— Nathie (@NathieVR) May 14, 2026
There’s also the caveat of battery life, which I think looms over a lot of the apps in the pipeline. As appealing as it would be (for people who hate reality) to walk around with YouTube glued to your face all the time, I don’t think the battery on the Meta Ray-Ban Display would agree with that assessment. It takes a lot of juice to funnel light through geometric waveguides inside the Meta Ray-Ban Display, and the more you use the screen, the quicker the battery drains—especially if you’ve got the brightness turned up.
There’s still a long way to go before Meta convinces me that it has a real, sustainable ecosystem for its smart glasses, but opening up the forum for people to actually make apps people want to use is a good start if Meta doesn’t torpedo its own brand before apps have a chance to mature.
