HeadOrbit

macOS · menu bar · open source

Your AirPods
know where
you're looking.

HeadOrbit reads the head-tracking sensors already inside your AirPods and turns them into small, useful things on your Mac. Look away, the screen blurs. Slouch, it nudges you to sit up.

Download for Mac · View source

macOS 14+ · AirPods or Beats with head tracking · MIT license · nothing leaves your Mac

Something you're working on
Move your cursor away from the window. That's what turning your head does.

Two things it does today.

01

Blur when you look away

Turn your head left or right past a set angle and the whole screen softly blurs. Look back and it clears. Handy in open offices, cafés, and any time someone walks up behind you.

  • Trigger angle and delay are yours to tune
  • Menu bar stays sharp so you can always reach the app
02

Posture reminder

Calibrate while sitting straight. When you slump, your chin drifts up to keep looking at the screen. HeadOrbit notices, blurs the screen, and asks you to sit up. Press Esc to snooze it.

  • Head-up only, so looking at your keyboard never counts
  • Slow trigger, measured in seconds, not twitches
HeadOrbit menu bar panel

Live angles. See exactly what the earbuds see, and which earbud is streaming.

One-click calibration. Whatever pose you're in when you click becomes "forward".

English / 中文, light / dark. Follows the system, switchable in the menu.

How it works

  1. 1

    Wear your AirPods

    Connected to this Mac, not your iPhone. One earbud or both.

  2. 2

    Calibrate once

    Sit straight, look at the screen, click the button. Every angle is measured from there.

  3. 3

    Forget about it

    It lives in the menu bar. No Dock icon, no window, no account, no network.

The only permission is Motion & Fitness.

No camera, no screen recording, no microphone. The motion data never leaves your Mac and is never stored. The whole app is a few hundred lines of Swift you can read.

Install

Download the app

Grab the DMG, drag HeadOrbit into Applications. It isn't notarized with Apple yet, so the first time, right-click the app and choose Open. Or:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/HeadOrbit.app

Or build it yourself

brew install xcodegen
git clone https://github.com/Cogria-AI/HeadOrbit.git
cd HeadOrbit && ./build.sh
open build/Build/Products/Debug/HeadOrbit.app
SystemmacOS 14 Sonoma or later
HeadphonesAirPods Pro (any generation), AirPods 3 / 4, AirPods Max, Beats Fit Pro, Powerbeats Pro 2, or any AirPods / Beats with head tracking
PermissionMotion & Fitness, asked on first launch

Questions

It says "no head-tracking headphones" while I'm wearing AirPods.

Check that they're connected to the Mac rather than your iPhone. If they auto-switched to another device, HeadOrbit shows "Headphones are on another device" and simply waits; it never pulls them back. Tracking resumes on its own when they return.

Does it work with one earbud?

Yes. The menu tells you which earbud is streaming.

Why isn't it on the App Store?

The blur uses a WindowServer call Apple doesn't document, because on recent macOS the documented materials render as a flat sheet. That rules out the App Store for now. It's an experiment, and it's honest about being one.

Is it tracking me?

Only your head angle, only on your Mac, only while the app is running. There is no analytics, no network code, no account.