---
name: Look and pinch
slug: look-and-pinch
category: interaction
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: Spatial input where the eyes choose the target and a finger pinch
  commits the action, so selection and activation come from different body
  parts.
aliases:
  - name: gaze and pinch
    source: community
  - name: indirect gesture
    source: hig
  - name: eye tracking selection
    source: community
tags:
  - platform-registers
  - pointer
relations:
  contrastWith: []
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso:
    - spatial-ui
    - dwell-activation
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: "Apple Developer: Explore game input in visionOS"
    url: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2024/10094/
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: gaze selects, hand confirms, no cursor involved
---

There is no cursor and no controller. The reader looks at a button, touches thumb to
forefinger, and the button is pressed. Aim and commit have been split between two body parts:
the eyes do the pointing, continuously and without effort, and the hand does nothing but say
yes. The hand can be anywhere, resting in a lap or on an armrest, which is why the platform
vocabulary calls this the indirect gesture and reserves direct manipulation for the other
mode, reaching out and touching a panel that is within arm's length.

The split has one consequence that reorganises everything else: hover cannot mean anything. A
pointer can be parked in a corner, but eyes are always somewhere, so an interface that acted on
gaze would be firing constantly at whatever the reader happened to glance at. Systems built this
way therefore draw a soft highlight on the looked-at element and stop there. The highlight is
feedback and nothing more, and every real consequence waits for the pinch. Anything a mouse
would have hung on hover, a preview, a submenu, a tooltip that reveals the answer, has to move
to an explicit commit or be shown all the time.

The second consequence is that targets have to be big and far apart. Gaze is noisy: the eye
drifts, jitters, and lands within a degree or so rather than on a pixel, and the sharp part of
vision is a small patch in the middle of a wide field. Controls that a mouse could pack shoulder
to shoulder become a coin toss. Generous hit areas, real space between neighbours, and no
critical control tucked beside its opposite are not polish here, they are the difference between
an interface that works and one that does the wrong thing at random.

Privacy is a design constraint rather than a footnote. Where the reader looked is intimate data,
so the system composites the highlight itself and hands the application nothing but the commit,
which means an app learns what was chosen and never what was considered. The accessible fallback
matters just as much: pinching is not available to everyone, and the same aim-then-commit split
can be closed with time instead of a hand, which is exactly what dwell activation does. Voice
and switch input close it a third way. A design that offers only one of these has quietly made
the eyes mandatory as well.