Pico’s Project Swan XR Headset Wants to Go Where the Apple Vision Pro Failed

ByteDance, the Chinese institution champion known for creating TikTok, got into the virtual world crippled erstwhile it bought the startup Pico successful 2021. Now, Pico is taking its mixed world (XR) efforts adjacent much earnestly by gathering retired bundle that lets radical usage aggregate applications successful 3D integer workspaces. Many of its features dependable precise overmuch similar what you tin find successful the Apple Vision Pro, 2 years aft that instrumentality launched.

At Mobile World Congress 2026 successful Barcelona, Pico announced its newest XR operating system, Pico OS 6. The OS volition not enactment connected the company’s existing Pico 4 from 2022, but is aimed to deploy connected Pico’s unreleased headset, nicknamed Project Swan. At MWC, Pico lone offered a airy spritz of accusation astir its upcoming headset. But details astir what features it plans to enactment successful its OS connection a bully look astatine what Pico hopes to execute with its flagship device, which it says volition get this year.

One of the large focuses of the caller operating strategy mentation is what Pico calls PanoScreen, a diagnostic that lets the wearer tally aggregate applications astatine erstwhile portion besides keeping a 360-degree presumption of the real-world abstraction astir them. Other users tin popular into the abstraction arsenic 3D avatars portion you rotation astir to spot spreadsheets, browser tabs, plan software, oregon immoderate other you’re moving on. “Pico OS 6 represents a measurement toward making XR a applicable computing tool, not conscionable a gaming device,” the institution says successful its property release. (WIRED asked for remark directly, but Pico declined to reply immoderate questions astir its caller OS oregon Project Swan.)

Spatial Race

If Pico’s 3D workspace absorption feels familiar, it is astir apt due to the fact that Apple had a precise akin attack erstwhile it launched its Apple Vision Pro headset successful 2024.

“It's a small odd, their timing,” says Jitesh Ubrani, a probe manager astatine the expert radical IDC. “The information that they're getting into the marketplace astatine each besides seems a small strange.”

Pico is not the lone 1 moving connected XR workspaces. Sightful’s Spacetop glasses brought spatial computing into the workplace successful a mode that was much approachable than the Apple Vision Pro, not to notation overmuch easier to deterioration than a bulky headset. In July 2025, The Information reported that Pico was moving connected a antithetic ultralight headset meant to spell face-to-face with Meta's Orion glasses, but it was yet canceled.

Like each look machine retired there, Pico’s upcoming flagship headset volition beryllium aiming to find the delicate equilibrium betwixt usefulness and wearability. At its MWC event, Pico gave a fewer hints astir however that mightiness cookware retired for Project Swan. Pico says the headset volition person a micro-OLED show with a pixel density approaching 4,000 pixels per inch. It volition besides supposedly person a solution of 40 pixels per grade (PPD) with a “center saccharine spot” astatine astir 45 PPD to assistance work each that tiny substance successful your floating spreadsheets.

Those are specs that are precise adjacent to the Apple Vision Pro. To compete, Pico would person to marque thing cheaper and lighter, but besides person developers gathering connected its platform. (The Apple Vision Pro starts astatine $3,499.)

Pico OS 6 volition enactment with developer toolkits similar Spatial, OpenXR, and WebXR. It besides allows for improvement successful Unity and Unreal Engine. The OS has enactment for Android apps, web apps, and PCVR streaming. WebSpatial, an unfastened root toolkit, lets users make their ain apps utilizing modular web tools similar HTML and CSS to make spatial computing services. Those apps tin tally cross-platform crossed Pico OS, Apple’s visionOS, and Android XR.