View content from your Mac on Apple Vision Pro
You can stream a document in Preview to Apple Vision Pro, so you can review 3D scenes, images, and PDFs in a real spatial context. You can stream a live, interactive 3D scene, a rendered image of what’s in the viewport, or both.
Note: Mac Virtual Display must be active to enable the Preview on Apple Vision Pro button. See Use Mac Virtual Display on Apple Vision Pro.
Start a session
Go to the Preview app
on your Mac.
Open the file you want to work with.
Note: The document must be saved. If a document hasn’t been saved—including a new, untitled document, or one that Preview automatically duplicated—the Apple Vision Pro button is dimmed. Pointing to it shows “Save Document to enable Spatial Preview.”
Click
at the bottom right of the viewport. This button appears only when Mac Virtual Display is active.
If more than one Apple Vision Pro is available, choose the device you want to connect to.
For USD documents, Preview optimizes the scene for streaming and shows a progress indicator until it’s done. If you cancel the optimization, or it fails, the session ends and the button returns to its original state.
After the connection succeeds, the button’s background changes to your system’s accent color.
Choose what to sync
Go to the Preview app
Open the file you want to work with.
Click the arrow next to the Apple Vision Pro button to open preview options, then turn on one or both of the following:
3D Scene: Streams the entire scene—geometry, materials, lights, cameras, and transforms—to Apple Vision Pro, so you can interact with it there. Edits you make in Preview, including undo and redo, stay in sync in real time.
Spatial Image: Streams the rendered image from your Mac computer’s viewport, so Apple Vision Pro shows exactly what you see in Preview, including Raytracer output. Use this when you want an exact match to your Mac computer’s render, or when a scene is too complex to stream live.
With both options on, Apple Vision Pro shows the interactive scene with the rendered image overlaid. With only 3D Scene on, Apple Vision Pro renders the scene itself. With only Spatial Image on, Apple Vision Pro displays your Mac computer’s rendered frames, similar to a spatial photo. If you turn off both options while a session is active, the session ends automatically.
Your choices are saved with the document, so the same options are used the next time you start a session for that file.
For documents that aren’t USD files—including images, PDFs, and 3D files in other formats—the arrow next to the Apple Vision Pro button is unavailable, since Spatial Preview options require a USD document. Preview streams the rendered image only, and you can’t interact with the file’s contents on Apple Vision Pro.
Sync animation playback
While a 3D Scene session is active, playback stays in sync in both directions.
Action | Effect | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Press Play on your Mac | Playback starts on Apple Vision Pro | ||||||||||
Press Pause on your Mac | Playback pauses on Apple Vision Pro | ||||||||||
Scrub the timeline on your Mac | When you release the scrubber, the timeline moves to the same point on Apple Vision Pro | ||||||||||
Press Play on Apple Vision Pro | Playback starts on your Mac | ||||||||||
Press Pause on Apple Vision Pro | Playback pauses on your Mac |
Stop a session
While a session is active, do any of the following:
Click
Turn off both toggles in Spatial Preview options (see Choose what to sync).
End the session from your Apple Vision Pro—the session on your Mac stops automatically.
To view what you’re streaming, see View 3D content from your Mac on Apple Vision Pro.