India, June 5 -- Apple may be preparing to take AirPods to a new level of interactivity. A newly granted patent, titled "Wearable skin vibration or silent skin gesture detector," outlines how future AirPods could interpret not just head gestures, but also subtle skin vibrations and silent movements like whispers or facial muscle shifts.

The company made its first notable move in this direction in 2024, when AirPods Pro began supporting head gestures, nods to accept calls and shakes to decline. But this latest patent suggests Apple wants to go far beyond that, with technology capable of recognising more nuanced user inputs.

According to the document, Apple aims to use self-mixing interferometry, a type of optical sensing, to track vibrat...