Reference

Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32S3 Pinout

The real pin reference for Seeed Studio's XIAO ESP32S3: thumbnail-sized, native USB, with a camera/display connector on the Sense variant.

21 september 2026 1 min read

The XIAO ESP32S3 packs an ESP32-S3 into Seeed’s same 21×17.8mm XIAO footprint as the XIAO ESP32C3. It comes in a plain version and a “Sense” version that adds an onboard microphone and a camera/expansion connector. Pin data below is sourced from Seeed’s own wiki.

System-on-chip

The ESP32-S3 is the same dual-core Xtensa LX7 chip covered on this site’s AI-S3 page, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 5 LE, and native USB. The XIAO board exposes 11 regular GPIOs plus JTAG pins, with an onboard status LED and a separate charge-status LED.

GPIO reference

XIAO pin	GPIO	Function
D0	GPIO1	ADC, touch
D1	GPIO2	ADC, touch
D2	GPIO3	ADC, touch
D3	GPIO4	ADC, touch
D4	GPIO5	I²C SDA, ADC, touch
D5	GPIO6	I²C SCL, ADC, touch
D6	GPIO43	UART TX
D7	GPIO44	UART RX
D8	GPIO7	SPI SCK, ADC, touch
D9	GPIO8	SPI MISO, ADC, touch
D10	GPIO9	SPI MOSI, ADC, touch

Boot: GPIO0 (hold low at power-on to enter the bootloader). Reset: CHIP_PU. Onboard user LED: GPIO21. Charge LED: a separate, non-GPIO indicator for USB charging status.

"Sense" variant: camera and microphone

The Sense variant adds a PDM microphone (data on GPIO42, clock on GPIO41) and a B2B expansion connector carrying a DVP camera interface (GPIO10–18, 38–40, 47–48) plus an SD-card SPI interface (GPIO7–9, 21), shared with the main header pins above, don’t assume both the camera/SD card and the main header are simultaneously free for other uses. If your board doesn’t have the extra connector on the underside, you have the plain (non-Sense) variant, and none of this section applies.

Conclusion

The XIAO ESP32S3 gives you native USB and more compute than the XIAO ESP32C3 in the same tiny footprint, plus a real camera/microphone path on the Sense variant. For a full-size breakout with two USB-C ports instead, see the AI-S3.