How to create your Persona in Vision Pro (or make it better)

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Woman holding a Vision Pro in front of her face, capturing her Vision Pro Persona
You need to hold the Vision Pro in front of your face to capture your Persona.
Photo: Apple

The Vision Pro Persona is a 3D representation of yourself that will appear to others in FaceTime calls. It also fuels the EyeSight feature, which shows a ghostly 3D version of your eyes on the outside of the headset to make the device seem less isolating. 

Many people criticize the Personas for looking unnatural, so the feature very much deserves its beta label. However, there are some things you can do to create a better one. If you didn’t create a Vision Pro Persona while setting up your headset, or want to redo it to make yours look a little less uncanny, I’ll show you how to do it at any time.

How to create a Vision Pro Persona

Apple touts the Persona as a “dynamic, natural representation of your face and hand movements that can be used while you’re wearing Apple Vision Pro. As such, it’s a good idea to take the necessary time to make yours as good as possible. This is your digital face in the spatial computing era, after all.

Preparation: Good lighting, background and posture

First, make sure your environment is ready:

  • Make sure there’s bright, even lighting with no harsh shadows.
  • Stand against a blank, featureless wall if possible.
  • Relax and lower your shoulders as you hold the headset in front of you.

Step-by-step instructions

When you’re ready, here’s how to create your Vision Pro Persona:

  1. Go to Settings > Persona and tap Get Started. You can watch Apple’s video guide for the setup process, or tap Continue.
  2. Take off the Vision Pro. Make sure to hold the aluminum frame and not the foam light seal, which can detach when pinched. Turn it around to look at it eye-to-eye, so to speak.
  3. Don’t put your glasses on — you can add glasses to your Persona later.
  4. You’ll hear instructions that tell you to slowly turn your head around, smile with your mouth closed, smile wide showing your teeth, raise your eyebrows, and close your eyes. (If you’re hard of hearing, the number of rings on the front display indicates which step you’re on. They count down from 4 to 0.)
  5. Put the headset back on.
  6. Edit your Vision Pro Persona by adjusting the lighting, brightness and hue. You also can add a pair of virtual glasses.

Make a better Vision Pro Persona

If you aren’t satisfied with your initial results results, you can always try again. To make a better Vision Pro Persona, just go to Settings > Persona > Edit Details or Recapture. Granted, it’ll probably look uncanny no matter what you do.

As mentioned, the feature is still in beta. Just hang tight, it looks like visionOS 1.1 will already come with some improvements.

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