Former Meta employees launch a ring to take voice notes and control music

Former Meta employees Mina Fahmi and Kirak Hong have launched Sandbar, introducing Stream, a smart ring designed to capture voice notes and control music discreetly. Drawing on their extensive backgrounds in human-computer interfaces and neural tech, the founders created Stream to address the challenge of capturing fleeting thoughts without interrupting daily activities or speaking aloud in public. The ring, worn on the dominant hand’s index finger, features microphones activated by a touchpad gesture, enabling users to record whispers that are transcribed in a companion iOS app. The app includes an AI chatbot that interacts with users during recording, helping organize and edit notes, with a personalized assistant voice that resembles the user’s own. Beyond voice note-taking, the Stream ring functions as a media controller, allowing users to play, pause, skip tracks, and adjust volume without needing to access their phone or headphones. The device provides haptic feedback to confirm inputs and supports private conversations via headphones in noisy environments. Sandbar is opening pre-orders for Stream