A writer built an app that lets AirPods control a Mac with head moves

A writer at Digital Trends now controls his Mac with head movements, and the only hardware involved is the AirPods in his ears. Nadeem Sarwar built a small app called Headway that reads the motion sensors in his AirPods Pro 3. He used it to scroll a book and flip between browser tabs without touching the laptop.

What it does

Headway lives in the menu bar, the strip at the top of the Mac screen. It turns simple head moves into commands. The writer said he first noticed how handy it was while cooking, with about 20 recipe tabs open and messy hands.

• Tilt your head up or down to scroll a page smoothly.
• Nod to move the page, or double nod to jump to the top or bottom.
• Turn your head left or right to switch browser tabs.
• Tilt toward a shoulder to go back or forward on a page.
• Shake your head to refresh the page.

Built to avoid mistakes

Head gestures can misfire, so the app has several safeguards. Scrolling speed and a setting called the dead zone can be adjusted. A bigger dead zone means only deliberate moves count. The app pauses itself when the writer glances down at the keyboard. A recenter button treats your current head position as neutral, which helps when posture shifts during the day.

Each gesture also gets a small sound and an on-screen badge showing what was recognized. Users can set rules for each app, swap what gestures do, and see a daily count of gestures on a stats page.

How it was made

The writer built Headway with Claude, an AI tool, using the Claude Opus 5.5 model. He started with a rough spoken description of the idea. The first working version ran on his MacBook Pro within about ten minutes, and a fully working app followed in under an hour.

The idea grew out of an earlier project, PoseNudge, which used the Mac camera to catch slouching. A camera watching all the time raised privacy concerns, and the app had not passed Apple's security checks. So he rebuilt the idea around AirPods sensors instead.

Privacy and limits

According to the writer, Headway runs locally on the Mac. It only reads head-movement data that Apple's Core Motion framework provides from the AirPods. The same sensors power head-tracked Spatial Audio on supported AirPods models. The app is tuned for Google Chrome, since his work happens in the browser.

What is not known

Headway is a personal project, not an Apple feature. The material does not say whether it will be shared or sold, or whether it works with other AirPods models. Still, it shows that earbuds already carry useful sensors, and that AI tools now let non-experts build apps for their own needs.