WhatsApp may soon let you dictate messages through a pair of smart glasses

A niche feature for Ray-Ban Stories owners

Ever wanted to speak to a pair of smart glasses to send a WhatsApp message without even touching your phone? That feature may soon become a reality, according to a new APK teardown of the WhatsApp for Android app. It seems to be a specific feature for Facebook Assistant, and it'll be locked to Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses.

Spotted in the latest WhatsApp beta 2.22.9.13 (via XDA Developers) users have found strings of data that suggest a feature is being worked on to dictate messages through Facebook Assistant on the specific wearable line. The data just says Assistant, but that likely means Facebook Assistant rather than Google’s service of the same name.

It’s thought this upcoming feature would allow Ray-Ban Stories owners to dictate messages into the microphone on the smart glasses. It would allow you to instruct Facebook Assistant to message a friend on WhatsApp, so you could do this while walking down the street without even touching your phone. Alongside the strings of code, the teardown has also found graphics that include the smart glasses and the WhatsApp logo.

This is a very specific use case as Ray-Ban Stories haven't revolutionized the wearables market. It does make sense that Meta wants to keep some of its WhatsApp features in-house though, and will be using Facebook Assistant to integrate rather than third-party services. As ever, APK teardowns aren’t guaranteed to be accurate. This feature is spotted within the latest beta, but there’s no certainty that it will ever make its way to WhatsApp in a future release.