MentraOS – open-source Smart glasses OS
19 comments
·September 5, 2025andrewla
floren
Not to toot my own horn, but I've been fiddling with a now-discontinued, very cheap pair of display smart glasses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45087803
You can send low-resolution images to them via Bluetooth. I just figured out how to read button presses. There are speakers and a mic, but I haven't figured out how to use them yet (they don't show up as regular audio devices on Linux).
You'd need to write custom stuff to generate the images, but with a little imagemagick scripting I've had some pretty usable results.
queSide
I think most of Xreal's offerings are just a display you plug into a phone or laptop.
skhameneh
Not quite "smart glasses", but if you want "glasses that are just a display", the Lenovo Legion Glasses are pretty good and they look like normal aviators at first glance.
I have a pair and I've been experimenting a bit.
For iOS you can mirror display or use Stage Manager. For Android, at least with Samsung, DEX is pretty decent.
For audio, they're decent too, I like the convenience and comfort. The audio has good fidelity, but depth is mediocre (better than phone speakers though).
FWIW I say DEX is decent, having much of the same gripes as I do with Stage Manager. Dual screen, resizing windows, and full screen support is still a mixed bag on all mobile devices. It can be very frustrating at times. Application support on iOS and Android is about the same, which is disappointing. Supposedly iOS 26 fixes some of this, but I haven't tried the beta.
arbayi
https://store.vufine.com/ I think vufine might be what you are looking for, I don't know much about them as well, also found it here on Hacker News.
HeatrayEnjoyer
Glasses with a camera should be legislated away with specific narrow exceptions for e.g. safety in certain industrial tasks.
skhameneh
Reframe this to accommodate for the prevalence and general expectations of where cameras exist.
Many people walk around with a mobile device out, essentially carrying a device with (increasingly) close to a 360 camera view. Cameras are ubiquitous and targeting one niche device is a waste of time and effort.
poly2it
How open-source are these glasses really? Are all software components compilable from source, or do they just publish an SDK Espressif-style?
asdev
this doesn't include AR right? it can't overlay stuff on what i'm seeing? if not, then it's pretty useless
barroomhero
I'm with you. Augmented Reality is what I'm looking for. I've been dreaming about it for decades.
dang
Related. Others?
Show HN: Sheet Music in Smart Glasses - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43906442 - May 2025 (25 comments)
arbayi
I just found out about them and it seems super good. I wonder why Meta doesn't support such a thing called "Meta Glasses Application Store"
exe34
I'm more than happy to develop my own apps, but it doesn't appear that they support any one product with all the features yet.
zoklet-enjoyer
Live translation is something I've been dreaming about since Google Glass. I just want translation, subtitles, turn by turn directions, and ad blocking.
ineedasername
Even Realities G1 glasses, which support Mentra, will do the first 2. The 3rd is partial, not quite turn by turn, but you can see a map around you with them on
joshuat
The idea of ad blocking with smart glasses kind of freaks me out. I'll take additive but I don't want subtractive reality where parts of the world are being hidden from me.
rippeltippel
> and ad blocking
The possibility of shooting ads directly into the retina is probably the main driving force behind smart glasses.
dmbche
And ultimate attention analysis
croes
So without their cloud service no apps.
Wouldn‘t call that an OS.
Is anybody making smart glasses that are just a display? For me, the rest of the feature set verges on being anti-features. I'd much rather a very rudimentary display that my phone or another device could send relatively low bandwidth data to over bluetooth or some other protocol and build from there.
Having a camera or a mic on the glasses themselves seems like something I'd mostly want to avoid for privacy, and having a speaker just seems like gilding the lily when we already have a variety of headphones to choose from.