Five Hacks Every Meta Smart Glasses User Should Know

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I wear Ray-Ban Meta glasses almost every day for more than a year. They’re great for taking hands-free photos, getting notifications, and listening to podcasts on a bike ride, but they’re not the most customizable tech product out there. However, they are not completely hack-proof. Below are five ways to transform your Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta smart glasses, use them in ways that aren’t “officially approved,” and generally make your smart glasses a little smarter than everyone else’s.

I am an upstanding citizen, so I dutifully categorize my receipts for tax purposes. But I don’t like doing that at all, so I figured out how to use my Meta Glasses as an almost-fully-automated receipt scanner and organizer. The process saves photos of your receipts in a folder, uses AI to scan them and categorize each item in them, then saves the information into a searchable spreadsheet. And it does it all without you touching the phone or keyboard.

Here’s what you’ll need to do to set up your Meta Glasses as a receipt scanner

• About 15 minutes of free time depending on how tech-savvy you are.

• Meta glasses, either Oakley or Ray-Ban

• A dedicated Gmail account for tax information.

• Google Drive, Google Sheets, Google Photos and Google Apps Script (all free)

• Cloud AI API Key (a few cents per receipt)

How to scan receipts with your Meta Glasses

Once set up, you can look at the receipt and say, “Hey, Meta, take a photo.” Then say, “Hey, Siri, email that photo to (enter your Gmail address here) with the subject ‘Receipt’.” Every night, a script automatically reads the receipt, extracts the vendor, date, and amount, logs everything in a spreadsheet, and saves the receipt in a photo album. You won’t have to open that mail account until April (but I’ll check it occasionally to make sure it’s actually working).

Setting up your Meta Glasses to scan receipts

• Step 1: Create a dedicated Gmail account for your taxes. This keeps everything clean and separate from your daily inbox.

• Step 2: In that tax Gmail account, create a label called “Receipt” and set up a filter so that any email with “Receipt” in the subject line automatically receives that label. go to Settings > Filters and blocked addresses > Create new filter.

• Step 3: Create a “Taxes” folder in Google Drive. This is where your receipt spreadsheet will come to life.

• Step 4: Create a Google Sheet called “Receipt Log” with these column headers: Date, Vendor, Amount, Tax Category, Notes, Drive Link.

• Step 5: Open your receipt log, then click Extensions > Apps Script. I wrote a script for this part using Cloud AI, which you can find Here in the Google Doc. This tells the AI ​​to look at receipts and figure out how to put them into the right categories; Copy and paste it into the apps script.

• Step 6: Get Cloud API Key at console.anthropic.com. You may be able to use a non-cloud AI for this project, but I don’t know for sure because I haven’t tested any others. The cost per receipt is a few cents, so dropping to $5 should cover the year.

• Step 7: In Sheets, go to Project Settings > Script Properties > Add. Add a property called CLAUDE_API_KEY and paste your key as the value. (Never paste it directly into the code.)

• Step 8: Set a daily trigger so that the script runs automatically. In the Apps script, click the clock icon, select Add a triggerThen set it to run “processReceipts” on a daily timer.

Things to keep in mind when using your Meta Glasses to scan receipts

• Save paper receipts: You should get an error message if there is a problem reading a particular receipt, but since These are tax documents, keep copies of them all, just in case.

• Make the photos as clear as possible: AI can only read what your glasses see, so keep the receipt flat, make sure the lighting is right, and get close enough that the text fills the frame. The Meta’s camera is a handheld, but it’s “aimed” for the medium, so keep the receiver as focused as possible. Crumpled or backlit receipts will give you less accurate results and may require quick manual correction.

• You can use your phone Also for taking pictures of receipts. It’s not as elegant, and you have to use your hand, but it’s easy to see that you’ve taken a clear photo.

Since the cameras, speakers, and CPU of the Meta glasses reside entirely within the frame, you can easily switch lenses without fear of damaging your spy-glasses. Ray-Ban and Oakley Meta glasses lenses pop right out and click back without any tools, so you can swap between clear, tinted, polarized, sports or reading lenses in seconds, depending on what you’re doing.

To replace the lens, place your thumb on the bottom of the lens and push firmly and evenly to pop it out. To insert a new one, align it near the temple arm and gently push around the edge until it clicks into place without any gap. Companies like Revant Optics And VR Wave Cut all types of lenses specifically for all models of both Ray-Ban and Oakley Meta frames. Options include tinted, mirrored, polarized and transition lenses, with prices starting around $40.

Meta has hidden a useful feature for its Ray-Ban and Oakley Meta glasses in the accessibility menu. Enhanced visual descriptions give you a more detailed description of what you’re seeing by adding details like colors, textures, and how many people are in the room, among other things. This feature was created for users with low vision, but it is really useful for anyone. To enable it: Open the Meta AI app, tap the Glasses icon, then hit the Settings gear. From here, head AccessibilityThen scroll to find out Detailed responses. Once enabled, try saying “Hey Meta, describe what I’m seeing”.

Here are some other ways to improve your AI voice: In Settings, you can change the speed at which your AI voice speaks to you. It must be set to at least 1.25. Additionally, you might think that switching to a “celebrity voice” would be annoying, but it generally sounds more natural than Meta’s stock voice (at least to me). It also doesn’t change what the meta says, for example, Awkwafina might say: it’s just Awkwafina’s voice that will say the meta’s voice.

I have my best ideas while cooking, riding a bike, and juggling—the worst times to take notes. So I use this simple yet powerful method to turn my glasses into a hands-free brain-dump organizer. Here’s how to do it: Create a WhatsApp or Messenger group with yourself as the only member. Then, whenever you get an idea while you’re cooking, driving, or riding your bike, you can say, “Hey Meta, message (you) on WhatsApp: (your brilliant idea).” The result is a hands-free, time-stamped, searchable, automatically transcribed log of all your thoughts.

My Meta Smart Glasses get about eight hours of battery life on a single charge, depending on how I use them, which sounds good until I’m working overtime. With no charging port on the glasses, you might think you’d be stuck with dumb glasses when the power runs out, but you can actually keep the Metas going without using a charging case. There are several options for charging your face:

• such as battery packs PrismXR Carina C1 Magnetically snap onto the frame and connect via the same external charging contacts used by the case. Each adds about two hours of use.

• If you don’t mind the lead in your pocket, you can add it Clip-on cable which links to the charging interface of the glasses and runs to a power brick in your pocket. This extends the life of the Meta Glasses for as long as the battery of your choice lasts.

Dishonorable mention: Removing the camera light

It’s no secret that you can Block the indicator light on your Meta glasses And still use the camera, but you shouldn’t. There may be some legitimate reasons for that—maybe you’re taking photos of wildlife and you don’t want to scare the animals, or you’re using glasses to take a selfie video in the mirror—but generally, the light is there to make it more obvious to others that you’re taking a photo or video, so blacking it out is weird.