Spectacles Community Challenge
The Spectacles Community Challenge is OPEN! 🙌
We're excited to launch a brand new virtual hackathon series – Spectacles Community Challenges. Each month brings fresh opportunities to explore the cutting-edge AR creation format on Spectacles, or dive deeper into working with this top-notch AR device and win up to $5,000! 😎
Whether you're creating immersive games, practical utilities, or experimental experiences, the Spectacles Community Challenge offers a platform to showcase your innovation and creativity while connecting with a global community of AR developers.
The Spectacles Community Challenge is a monthly competition where developers can submit their projects in three categories:
New Lens Category - Submit your brand new Spectacles Lens that passes the Lens Explorer quality bar
Lens Update Category - Improve and upgrade your already published Spectacles Lens with substantial new features
Open Source Category - Share your experimental projects, including those using Experimental APIs, on platforms like GitHub
Winners in each category receive recognition, prizes up to $5,000, and the opportunity to be featured in our official documentation and community showcases.
Ready to showcase your Spectacles development skills? Follow these steps to join the current challenge:
Create a new Lens, update an existing one, or build an open-source project for Spectacles
- Make sure your project meets the category requirements
- Submit before the monthly deadline
August 2025 Challenge
Spectacles Community Challenge #5: Winners Announcement
We're excited to announce the Winners of the Spectacles Community Challenge #5! Explore all of the projects, and see how Snap's AR Glasses redesign what's in front of us. Each Lens created for Spectacles not only inspires the AR community to push their creative comfort zones, but also showcases how AR glasses are evolving into tools for everyday life—not just futuristic gadgets. The Spectacles Community Challenge, in collaboration with the Snap Team, was designed to empower developers to experiment with new tools and features, share their creativity, and earn recognition for their work. After more than six months of the Challenge, we're proud to see the Community embrace this opportunity to its fullest. 💜
New Lens Category
A category that pushes you to experiment with unfamiliar tools, features, and ideas, turning curiosity into innovation to create new, engaging Lenses.
Deep Contact by Danny Pimentel
Deep Contact takes users on a journey beneath the ocean's surface to imagine what it might be like if the sea could speak. The Lens explores the intelligence, language, and culture of octopuses, inviting participants to attempt humanity's first true contact. It's a thought-provoking experience that turns the ocean into a place of discovery and conversation.
WhereAbouts by Liam Mason
Whereabouts turns the world into a playground for exploration and quick thinking. In this AR game, players are dropped into immersive scenes from different corners of the globe and must figure out where they are. Each guess comes with risk and reward—the closer you land, the safer your score, but a wrong call will cost you. With every round, the challenge builds, pushing players to rely on both intuition and knowledge to stay in the game.
Snake and Ladder by Vivek Thakur
Snake and Ladder brings the timeless board game into mixed reality with a lively new twist. Players roll the dice to race across the board, climbing ladders to leap ahead while avoiding snakes that send them sliding back. Fast-paced and full of surprises, the Lens reimagines a classic favorite as an interactive experience packed with energy and excitement.
GenAI Gravity Gun by Alex Bradt
GenAI Gravity Gun transforms your hand into a powerful tool for creating and playing with virtual objects. Using voice recognition, players can generate any object they imagine through the Snap3D API, which then appears with realistic physics. Pinch to grab, release to throw, and watch as the object collides and interacts with the world around you. With gestures, voice commands, and physics all working together, the experience turns everyday spaces into a playground for creativity and fun.
Super Ships by Andrew Douglas
Super Ships turns your surroundings into a live battlefield in a fast-paced arcade shooter. Enemy ships spawn directly onto the surfaces around you, pulling the action right into your play space. Players can choose between two game modes: Planet Defence, where you place planets and guard them from swarming attackers, and Wave Mode, where the challenge is to survive against endless waves of enemies.
Lens Update Category
The Lens Update category invites you to revisit and enhance an already published Lenses, adding new features or refinements to unlock monetization and gain extra visibility.
Bplane Adventures by Pavlo Tkachenko
Bplane Adventures brings a fresh take on the relaxing flow-based game for Spectacles, now featuring four unique seasons with custom 3D assets and VFX, three new seasonal damage types, and a mid-game bonus level. The update also adds revamped sound design, a refreshed UI, an overhauled leaderboard and achievements, and a witty AI NPC that reacts to events and highlights seasonal details. Real-world calendar integration and updated difficulty logic make every flight feel new and engaging.
DGNS World FX by Guillaume Dagens
DGNS World FX lets users bend reality with 12 real-time GLSL shaders fully projected onto their physical environment. The v2.0 update brings a major leap in functionality and style, featuring a redesigned UI with stylized controls, multi-page shader selection, a built-in music player, and an in-Lens tutorial overlay. New interactions include a Pyramid Modifier for adjusting shader parameters, a reset button, and surface-specific projection toggles. Six new shaders, optimized performance, and an original soundtrack by PaulMX complete the experience, making it more immersive and dynamic than ever.
Fantastic Fragments by SunfloVR Team
Fantastic Fragments lets players use their hands to grab components and rebuild the world in a unique spatial puzzle, like a jigsaw brought to life. The latest update adds Testing Tides, a new ocean-themed set of puzzles, and a Global Leaderboard, letting players compare their completion times with the top three players worldwide in every world.
Open Source Category
This category welcomes open-source Lenses on GitHub, including those using Experimental APIs, giving you the freedom to push boundaries and break new ground without requiring Lens Explorer publication.
DGNS World FX by Guillaume Dagens
DGNS World FX lets users transform their surroundings with 12 real-time GLSL shaders projected onto the physical environment. The latest update delivers a major upgrade in both functionality and style, making interactions more immersive and visually striking than ever.
July 2025 Challenge
Spectacles Community Challenge #4: Winners Announcement
It's time to announce the winners of the Spectacles Community Challenge #4! 🏆 Explore the potential of Snap's new AR Glasses through the Lenses of AR Developers. 🕶️ When Snap first announced the fifth generation of Spectacles, we all wondered what possibilities the device might unlock. Today, AR developers continue to explore its potential, experimenting with new tools and updates to create Experiences that blend with—and transform—our reality right before our eyes. The Spectacles Community Challenges play a key role in this innovation, encouraging developers to experiment, create, and share their work. Participants gain recognition from the Snap AR Team, feature on our blog, and even earn real-life rewards for their contributions to the industry.
New Lens Category
This category challenges you to explore uncharted territory by experimenting with tools, features, and ideas you've never tried before. Transform curiosity into innovation and craft Lenses so fresh and engaging that users can't help but return for more.
HoloATC by Joost van Schaik
This Lens offers a dynamic 3D view of live air traffic across 40 major airports worldwide, including Los Angeles International and Snap HQ near Santa Monica. Users can select aircraft to highlight them for others at the same airport, view real-world photos by hovering over a plane, and explore six different aircraft types.
Daily Briefing by Andrew Douglas
Daily Briefing delivers a personalized morning update with a vibrant mix of audio and visuals. Users can instantly check the day's weather, catch up on news from their preferred sources, and enjoy a playful AI-powered horoscope, making it the perfect way to start the day informed and inspired.
Bplane Adventures by Pavlo Tkachenko
This relaxing, flow-based Spectacles game lets players guide a Bplane using only their hands, aiming to keep it airborne for as long as possible. With cozy visuals, an increasing level of challenge, and a competitive leaderboard, it offers a soothing yet engaging gameplay experience.
Tiny Hoops by Pretty Big Monster Team
Tiny Hoops transforms the classic arcade basketball shoot-out into AR, letting players grab and shoot with a single pinch gesture. Designed for Spectacles, it delivers smooth performance through optimized code, custom ball-flight physics, and dynamic hand-tracking effects. Players race against the clock on a half-court that fits anywhere, aiming for the highest score, with future updates planned to add multiplayer and power-ups.
Math Boxer by VyuXR Immersive Studios Team
Math Boxer combines fast-paced arithmetic puzzles with interactive punching mechanics for a brain-and-body workout. Players solve equations by physically striking the correct answer from three floating options, racing against the clock to test both mental speed and physical agility in an immersive 3D environment.
Lens Update Category
The Lens Update category is your chance to revisit a published creation that still has untapped potential. Whether you want to enhance it with new features, refine its design, or simply put it back in the spotlight, now's the time. Update your work, unlock monetization, and enjoy an extra surge of visibility through the Spectacles Community Challenge showcase.
Card Master by Harry Banda
Card Master is an AR card game for Snap Spectacles that teaches players how to play through guided tutorials and AI practice matches, now enhanced for a more dynamic and expressive experience. The update introduces fully animated Bitmoji avatars that react to gameplay with emotions like laughter, frustration, or confusion, alongside idle and talking animations. Real-time GPT-powered reactions add witty, sarcastic, or wholesome speech bubbles tailored to in-game events, making AI opponents feel more human. Players can also choose from multiple opponent voices and enjoy a new visual color picker for Wild cards, creating richer and more immersive matches.
Trajectory: The Object Liberation Front by Yegor Ryabtsov
Trajectory is a physics-based AR game where players join a rebel collective to free objects captured by a rogue AI, guided by their remote companion, Aux. Spanning eight evolving story levels, it blends spatial puzzle-solving with narrative depth. This update completely reinvents the Free Play mode by adding the Uplink Tool—a wrist-mounted mic and speaker that enables natural, persistent conversation with Aux. Players can now request 3D object generation with realistic physics, receive custom game objectives, ask rule-based questions, and hear contextual commentary. Enhanced tutorials, UI hints, and Aux's poetic insights create a more interactive and emergent sandbox experience.
Draw Flowers by Max van Leeuwen
Draw Flowers is a playful AR experience where users create virtual blooms by pinching their fingers, now enhanced with a subtle global leaderboard for competitive flower-growing. Players can track the longest flowers in the world, with rankings discreetly displayed in the palm of the left hand and only visible to those who opt in. A length counter and rank appear once a flower exceeds 15 meters, with rainbow animations celebrating first place. Offline progress is saved and uploaded later, ensuring no achievement is lost. This update also brings visual refinements for an even more charming experience.
Open Source Category
In this category, anything goes—as long as you share your Lens as open source on GitHub. No Lens Explorer publication is required, and even creations built with Experimental APIs that can't be released publicly are eligible. Push boundaries, break new ground, and you could still take home the win.
Remote ARsistance by Krunal Gediya
Remote ARsistance transforms Spectacles into a real-time remote support tool, letting users stream their view, receive live annotations, and chat with experts. Perfect for fieldwork, repairs, inspections, and collaborative XR experiences, it brings hands-free guidance and teamwork directly to the wearer.
Ad Blocker by Stijn Spanhove
AR Ad Blocker is an AI-powered Snap Spectacles Lens that detects and visually blocks advertisements in real time. Using pinch gestures and Google Gemini AI, users can enjoy a cleaner, distraction-free AR experience.
Chinatown 1905: The Bloody Angle AR Tour by Team 1905
This AR experience immerses players in Manhattan's Chinatown, transforming the historic streets into a vibrant, interactive playground. Built for Spectacles, users choose from three characters—Gangster, Police Officer, or Restaurant Owner—and race to collect hidden elements unique to each role. Navigating Doyers Street with hand and foot interactions, players uncover stories and cultural details woven into the neighbourhood, celebrating Chinatown's rich history, resilience, and community spirit.
June 2025 Challenge
Spectacles Community Challenge #3: Winners Announcement
It's time to unveil the winners of the Spectacles Community Challenge #3! Discover the standout projects and see how Snap AR glasses are transforming the way we interact with the world around us. As always, the winning entries from the monthly Spectacles Community Challenge showcase the highest level of skill in Augmented Reality. From immersive, world-altering Lenses that let users reshape their surroundings, to practical tools that support everyday tasks (like an AI-powered personal trainer that motivates you to get moving) Spectacles developers continue to push creative boundaries and keep users engaged. But the Spectacles Community Challenge is more than just a monthly showcase of new Lenses. It's a platform for Snap developers to experiment, stay inspired, and even monetize their creations, empowering the whole community to keep innovating.
New Lens Category
In this category, we invite you to step outside your comfort zone and experiment with something new. Explore the latest tools, features, and updates you haven't used before, and use them to create a fresh experience that keeps users coming back for more.
Vision Crafter by Krunal Gediya
Vision Crafter is a real-time tool that transforms 2D sketches into immersive 3D creations, blending creativity with cutting-edge technology. Whether it starts as a quick doodle or a detailed drawing, users can bring their ideas to life instantly, making the AR creation process feel effortless and almost magical.
Fantastic Fragments by SunfloVR Team
In this interactive spatial puzzle experience, players are tasked with restoring color to a faded village. Using hand tracking, they can grab components and rebuild the environment, like solving a living, 3D jigsaw puzzle. Once completed, the challenge continues with a race against the clock to beat your best time.
Ancestral Dance by WageLove Team
Wage Love: Ancestral Dance is an immersive AR experience for Snap Spectacles that guides users through a ritual of connection and transformation. Using voice commands and hand gestures, participants summon ancestral spirits, witness their dances, and engage in symbolic gestures of remembrance. As they move, trails of flowers follow, creating a poetic, healing journey that blends movement, memory, and a vision of the future.
Bodyweight Class by Danny Marree & Andrew Douglas
Bodyweight Class offers an AI-powered coaching experience that guides users through one of three difficulty levels with visual cues and audio instructions. Featuring over 10 different exercises generated by AI, the app delivers full-body workouts tailored to daily fitness goals. Progress is tracked persistently, including calories burned and other key metrics, allowing users to monitor and share their achievements.
Saturn V by Caio Alves
This Lens offers an interactive educational experience centered on the Saturn V rocket, the vehicle that carried astronauts to the moon. By simply tapping on different rocket components, users can access detailed descriptions and stories, all within a fully explorable 3D model. It's an engaging way to learn about space history through immersive interaction.
Lens Update Category
The Lens Update category is all about second chances. If you have a Lens you've already published but believe it deserves greater recognition or a meaningful update, this is your opportunity to shine. Refresh your creation, get monetized, and benefit from a powerful boost in visibility through the Spectacles Community Challenge spotlight.
Pixel Builder by Harry Banda
Pixel Builder is an AR experience that lets users create 3D pixel art structures by placing voxel blocks, similar to a digital coloring book. Players progress through 15 unlockable levels, each requiring full completion of the previous one. The latest update enhances the experience with a colored grid for precise block placement, an improved interactive tutorial, a visual completion indicator, a smoother navigation interface, and important bug fixes, making building more intuitive and enjoyable than ever.
Open Source Category
This category offers the greatest freedom to experiment. All it takes to participate is making your Lens open source on GitHub. Publication in Lens Explorer is not required! Even if your Lens uses Experimental APIs and can't be published publicly, it's still eligible to win as long as it's open-sourced.
ARcade Racer by Krunal Gediya
This experience blurs the line between reality and play by letting users drive their real RC car through an augmented world. As they navigate, players collect coins, dodge obstacles, and bring a virtual driver to life, blending physical motion with digital interaction on Snap Spectacles.
The Picnic Club by Ruya Baraz
This interactive picnic experience allows one or more users to select foods from a menu and arrange their plates virtually. If users desire something beyond the available options, they can summon a waiter with the press of a button to place a custom order, powered by 3D generative AI for personalized choices.
May 2025 Challenge
Spectacles Community Challenge #2: Winners Announcement
After patient anticipation, we're thrilled to unveil the winners of Spectacles Community Challenge #2. Once again, Lens Creators demonstrated the incredible potential of AR Glasses. From helpful chef assistants guiding your cooking, to multiplayer card games, to immersive worlds that reimagine reality through bold geometry and vibrant colour, Spectacles Developers lit up the Community with exciting creations, transforming the world around them into a digital playground.
New Lens Category
Once submissions met the quality bar and were published to Lens Explorer, judges from the Snap AR Team evaluated them based on standout design, creative innovation, and quality user experience.
Trajectory by Yegor Ryabtsov
This immersive Lens blends storytelling with spatial gameplay, turning the user's surroundings into a futuristic battlefield controlled by a rogue AI. As a rebel operative, your mission is to free memory-infused objects by navigating them through intricate spatial challenges. The game's rich lore and dynamic interactions make it a standout experience on Spectacles.
Chef's Assistant by Andrew Douglas and Danny Marree
Need dinner inspiration or a helping hand in the kitchen? Chef's Assistant lets users input ingredients they already have, and the virtual chef suggests a recipe. It even guides users through the process with built-in timers and step-by-step cues. An example of AR making everyday simpler and more entertaining.
Otter Rock AR by Luke Walker
Developed by University of Oregon students in collaboration with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, this Lens takes users beneath the waves of the Otter Rock Marine Reserve. It transforms ocean education into a hands-on, visually rich exploration, fostering a connection with marine life through interactive learning.
Biophonic by Heather Dunaway Smith
Plants communicate, and this Lens dares to imagine what they might be saying. Biophonic enables responsive interaction with a virtual plant using gestures, sound, and voice. It's a poetic, tech-enhanced exploration of nature-technology symbiosis.
DGNS World FX by Guillaume Dagens
DGNS World FX redefines AR art with 9 custom GLSL shaders that transform surroundings into a cyber dreamscape of glitchy visuals and vibrant geometry. Ideal for open or textured environments, this Lens pushes Spectacles to the edge of digital art expression.
Lens Update Category
If you've already published Lenses for Snap Spectacles but want to boost their visibility and recognition, the Lens Update category is for you. To qualify, your update must be meaningful. Think new features, content, or a major improvement to the experience. Minor tweaks like bug fixes or adding a button won't make the cut!
Card Master by Harry Banda
This AR card game didn't just get an update — it got a full upgrade. Highlights include a 13-level achievements system, support for multiple AI opponents, a revamped menu UI, and dynamic visual cues to enhance gameplay clarity. The result? A polished, replayable experience that turns card gaming into an AR adventure.
Word Bubbles by Andrew Douglas
Word Bubbles adds a spatial twist to word search. Players rotate a 3D cube to uncover themed words, now enhanced by weekly online puzzles and a global leaderboard. With internet-enabled challenges and real-time rankings, this Lens just got a lot more competitive.
Open Source Category
To enter this category, your Lens must be made open source on GitHub. Publication to Lens Explorer isn't required to be eligible. For example, if your Lens uses Experimental APIs and can't be published, it can still win, as long as it's open-sourced.
Spectacles To Unitree by Patrick Rose
This Lens bridges AR with robotics. Using Snap Spectacles, users can teleoperate a Unitree G1 humanoid robot, mirroring their hand gestures in real time. It's a jaw-dropping demonstration of how AR can cross into physical-world control systems.
AI Chef by Ralph Barbagallo
AI Chef uses ChatGPT to generate voice-guided recipes, turning AR glasses into smart cooking assistants. Users interact hands-free using voice commands, and the Lens provides intuitive control over timers and instructions. It's a peek into a future where AR glasses become intelligent home companions.
Starship AR by Stijn Spanhove
Launch a SpaceX Starship in AR, then guide its booster safely back to a miniature, 3D-printed tower using pinch gestures. Starship AR mixes real objects with digital controls in a fun, educational format that brings rocket science to life through spatial interaction.
April 2025 Challenge
Spectacles Community Challenge #1: Winners Announcement
We're closing the first edition of Spectacles Community Challenges with what all participants have been waiting for – the winners announcement! April's edition brought dozens of new Spectacles Lenses, updates and open source projects. From games and fitness apps, home design use cases or practical experiences bringing Spectacles' utility to the forefront – together with the Snap AR team, we're in awe of your projects and grateful to everyone who joined this first Spectacles Community Challenge.
New Lens Category
In the New Lens Category, our judges from the Snap AR team look for the most well-designed, interactive and Spectacles-native Lens that passes the Lens Explorer quality bar. If you own a pair of Spectacles, go ahead and try these New Lenses yourself!
Lenscraft by Nigel Hartman
This grand prize winning Spectacles experience allows you to craft your own worlds, unlock new materials as you level up, and even scale your creations to life-size to walk through them. World creation right at your fingertips!
Card Master by Harry Banda
Card Master is an immersive AR card game experience for Snap Spectacles that teaches players how to play card games through step-by-step tutorials and allows them to practice against AI opponents using hand gestures and voice commands.
Word Bubbles by Andrew Douglas
Word Bubbles is a word search but spatial! In Word Bubbles, you rotate a 3D cube to find words. There are several different themes to play and it includes the option to get a helpful hint if you get stuck. Can you find all the words to complete the level?
Cardio Touch by Ralph Barbagallos
Cardio Touch is a fun cardio fitness game for Spectacles. After setting up your workout space, targets will appear around you. Use your hands to clear them all to advance to the next set. Try to complete the workout as fast as possible for maximum cardio performance!
DGNS Music Player by Guillaume Dagens
DGNS Music Player is the first open-source music player for the platform, featuring 3 different skins: Y2K, Modern, and a unique Hand Skin display. Play local files or stream remote audio with standard playback controls. Your music, your way, on Spectacles!
Lens Update Category
This category is meant to motivate developers to improve and upgrade their already published Spectacles Lenses. For an update to be eligible, a substantial new feature or content must be added to the Lens. Bug fixes or minor updates such as adding a button do not count!
Sign of Doom by Jeetesh Singh
Sign of Doom is an intense first-person AR combat experience built exclusively for Spectacles, where your hands become the magical weapon. With this update, players can skip the intro, track their personal best score and compare results with players worldwide thanks to the Leaderboard feature.
Polar Explorer by Daniel Pimentel
Polar Explorer is part escape room, part educational experience where you learn about paleoclimatology and help offset the climate crisis as a futuristic Explorer. Thanks to this update, players can experience usability improvements, and play a carbon capture mini game.
Dream Home by Lien Tran & Thanh Hung (Calvin) Dong
Dream Home is an immersive dollhouse decorating experience using a random furniture generator. This update brings players tons of new content – from new furniture and wall modules to a new and animated pet – a capybara!
Open Source Category
For this category, it is not required for the Lens to be published to win a prize. For example, if the Lens uses Experimental APIs (and we know you love working with those!), you can submit your project to the Open Source category by sharing a link to your project on GitHub.
Home Automation by Krunal MB Gediya
Control your smart home with Snap Spectacles using intuitive hand gestures and Augmented Reality! This Lens integrates IoT devices like lights and fans with Snap AR technology, allowing you to control your devices in real-time just by looking at them through your Spectacles.
DeskWindow by David J Kordsmeier
Spectacles DeskWindow is a spatial desktop mirroring solution, allowing you to peek at what is going on with any desktop. It is an old trick used over the years to get simple mirroring working on platforms that don't support a full blown mirroring protocol.
Décor Assistant by Elsa Farrokhzad
An AI-AR powered interior design assistant for Snap Spectacles that helps users visualize room redesigns using computer vision, GPT-4o, and DALL-E 3. Select and place virtual décor elements manually using the touchpad and surface detection.
Ready to join the next challenge?
We see and admire all your hard work and can't wait to see what you come up with for the next edition. Are you creating a new Lens, updating one you published earlier, or building an open source project?
Register for the latest Challenge