iTrace: Click‑Based Gaze Visualization on the Apple Vision Pro

Abstract The Apple Vision Pro is equipped with accurate eye-tracking capabilities; however, its privacy restrictions prevent direct access to continuous user gaze data. This study introduces iTrace , a novel application that overcomes these limitations through click-based gaze extraction techniques, including manual methods such as a pinch gesture, as well as automatic approaches that utilize dwell control or a gaming controller. We developed a client-server system that captures gaze coordinates and transforms them into dynamic heatmaps for video and spatial eye tracking. It can generate individual and averaged heatmaps, enabling analysis of personal and collective attention patterns. To demonstrate its effectiveness and evaluate the usability and performance, a study was conducted with two groups of 10 participants, each testing different clicking methods. The 8BitDo controller achieved higher average data collection rates at 14.22 clicks/s compared to 0.45 clicks/s with dwell control, enabling significantly denser heatmap visualizations. The resulting heatmaps reveal distinct attention patterns, including concentrated focus in lecture videos and broader scanning during problem-solving tasks. By allowing dynamic attention visualization while maintaining a high gaze precision of 91%, iTrace demonstrates strong potential for a wide range of applications, including educational content engagement, environmental design evaluation, marketing analysis, and clinical cognitive assessment. Despite the current gaze data restrictions on the Apple Vision Pro, we encourage developers to use iTrace , but only in research settings.