Meta’s VR App Store Will Soon Be Filled with Phone-Style 2D Apps

Meta’s Quest headsets and app store have been available for a while now, but the software has largely been limited to 3D and AR apps and games. But now the company says it’s opening up to new possibilities — Horizon OS and Quest vice president Mark Rabkin said at Meta Connect that starting today, the Meta app store “fully welcomes 2D and spatial apps.”

Meta also claims to support web apps. What do you think? This New York Times‘ Word The app for Quest headsets that we wrote about last week is a Progressive Web App.

The company’s app store has been heavily guarded up until now, with one experimental section called App Lab. But today’s announcement sounds like the company is adapting its app store approach more to something like Google or Apple’s online marketplace, encouraging developers to bring more smartphone- or tablet-style apps to the VR platform. (The meta says App Lab is gone.)

The meta also says that Quest users can now place apps wherever they want, resize them, and use up to six of them at once. Users will also be able to open 2D apps while in a VR app, both of which are key features of Apple’s visionOS.

Perhaps Meta thinks Apple was right to release Vision Pro, which has supported iPad and iPhone apps for years.