Meta's Quest headsets and app store have been around for a while, but the software experience was largely limited to 3D and AR apps and games. But now the company is looking to open things up — Mark Rabkin, vice president of Horizon OS and Quest, said during Meta Connect that starting today, the Meta app store “fully welcomes 2D and spatial apps.”
Meta also says it supports web apps, and what do you know? The New York Times' Wordle App for Quest headsets, which we wrote about last week, is a progressive web app.
The company's app store has so far been heavily curated, with only one experimental section called App Lab. But today's announcement sounds like the company is bringing its app store approach more in line with a Google or Apple online marketplace, encouraging developers to bring more smartphone or tablet-style apps to the VR platform. (Meta says App Lab no longer exists.)
Meta also says Quest users can now place apps wherever they want, resize them, and use up to six of them at once. Users can also open a 2D app while in an immersive VR app, both of which are key features of Apple's visionOS.
Perhaps Meta believes Apple was up to something when it launched the Vision Pro, which already included support for years of iPad and iPhone apps right out of the box.