Tracker · Last checked 7 November 2026
Garment GUI tracker: who is building touchscreen clothing
Short answer: as of 7 November 2026, no company sells touchscreen clothing. The only working garment touchscreen is a lab prototype from the National University of Singapore, published in Nature on 21 October 2026. The one touch-fabric product that shipped widely, Google Jacquard, was switched off in April 2023.
Status at a glance
| Who | What | Latest date | Stage |
|---|---|---|---|
| NUS (Singapore) | Pixel-and-touch fibre; touchscreen sleeve | 21 Oct 2026 | Lab prototype |
| MIT (USA) | Programmable fibre computer for apparel | 26 Feb 2025 | Lab prototype |
| LG Display (Korea) | Stretchable display; fashion concepts | Nov 2024 | Corporate R&D |
| Fudan University (China) | Woven display textile, 6 m long | Mar 2021 | Lab prototype |
| Samsung SAIT (Korea) | Stretchable OLED with heart-rate sensor | 6 Jun 2021 | Corporate R&D |
| Google Jacquard (USA) | Touch and gesture fabric in jackets and bags | 24 Apr 2023 | Shipped, then shut down |
NUS: the first garment GUI (2026)
A team led by Assistant Professor Tural Khudiyev built a fibre that is both a row of pixels and a touch sensor. Fifty-four of them, each with 96 LEDs, make a 96 × 54-pixel screen on a sleeve. It ran a calculator, gallery, video, compass and voice commands. It survived 50 machine washes and 1,000 tight bends.1 The prototype still uses cabled controller circuits and external battery packs.2 No product or spin-off has been announced.
Full detail: Garment GUI explained.
MIT: a computer inside a fibre (2025)
Professor Yoel Fink's group built an elastic fibre that senses, stores data, processes and communicates. Fibres on the limbs worked as a network to identify physical activity, reaching nearly 95 percent accuracy when they "voted" together.3 It does not display images. It is the closest thing so far to the "brain" a garment GUI would need.
LG Display: stretchable screens for clothes (2022–2024)
LG Display says it developed a stretchable display in 2022 that expands from 12 to 14 inches. In September 2024 it showed clothing and bag concepts with stretchable displays at Seoul Fashion Week. In November 2024 it showed a display that stretches by 1.5 times.4,5 These are concepts, not products.
Fudan University: a display you can weave (2021)
Researchers wove conductive and light-emitting fibres into a display textile 6 metres long and 25 centimetres wide, with about 500,000 light-emitting points spaced about 0.8 mm apart. It survived repeated machine washing. Paired with a textile keyboard and power supply, it worked as a communication tool.6
Samsung: stretchable skin display (2021)
Samsung's research institute put a stretchable OLED and a heart-rate sensor in one patch. It worked when stretched by up to 30 percent and after 1,000 stretches. Samsung called the research "still in the early stages".7
Google Jacquard: the warning (2017–2023)
Google's Jacquard put touch and gesture sensing into fabric. It launched on Levi's jackets in 2017, then appeared in Yves Saint Laurent and Samsonite backpacks and an Adidas insole. You could double-tap your cuff to play music or brush it to skip a track. Google ended support on 24 April 2023. 9to5Google reported that existing jackets and backpacks would stop working once the app shut down.8
Buying a used Levi's Jacquard jacket? Expect the touch cuff not to work. The jacket itself is still a jacket.
What to watch next
- A licence or spin-off company from NUS for the pixel fibre.
- Thinner fibres knitted on standard industrial machines, which the NUS team says its method allows.1
- A built-in battery and controller, so the sleeve needs no cables.
We update this page when one of these happens. Spotted something we missed? It must have a public source to be listed.
Sources
- NUS News, 22 Oct 2026. news.nus.edu.sg/worlds-first-touchscreen-in-garment
- The Register, 22 Oct 2026. theregister.com
- MIT News, "Fiber computer allows apparel to run apps and 'understand' the wearer", 26 Feb 2025. news.mit.edu
- LG Display Newsroom, "The Dawn of Future Fashion! LG Display Captivates Seoul Fashion Week with Stretchable Displays", Sep 2024. news.lgdisplay.com
- LG Display Newsroom, "A Display That Stretches by 1.5 Times?", Nov 2024. news.lgdisplay.com
- Shi et al., "Large-area display textiles integrated with functional systems", Nature 591 (2021). pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33692559
- Samsung Newsroom, "Samsung Researchers Prove the Viability of Commercialized 'Stretchable' Devices", 6 Jun 2021. news.samsung.com
- 9to5Google, "Google shutting down the Jacquard smart fabric app in April", 28 Mar 2023. 9to5google.com