VR Android File Supervisor for Quest, obtainable on the Meta Horizon Retailer, allows you to set up downloaded APKs with out a PC.
It comes from the identical developer as Quest Video games Optimizer, a $10 sideloadable app fashionable with fanatics that allows you to override the visible settings of VR video games, reminiscent of decision, refresh fee, foveation stage, and extra.
To be clear, it has been doable to sideload different file supervisor apps that allow you to set up APKs for a very long time now. However what makes VR Android File Supervisor particular is that it is obtainable on the Horizon Retailer. Which means you needn’t ever use a PC, not even to initially sideload a file supervisor. The truth is, you do not even want developer mode enabled.
How To Sideload Content material On Meta Quest Utilizing SideQuest
Right here’s our information to sideloading content material on Oculus Quest, Meta Quest 2 and Quest Professional utilizing SideQuest.
When you’re undecided what any of this implies: Meta’s Horizon OS is predicated on Android, and APK is the file format for Android apps. Whenever you set up an app from the Horizon Retailer, Meta’s system routinely downloads and installs the APK within the background, with out you ever needing to know what is going on on, and handles updating it. However this is not the one option to acquire apps to your Quest.
You’ll be able to acquire APKs for fashionable free 2D Android apps on web sites like APKMirror, or for VR Android apps distributed by particular person builders off-store, however Horizon OS does not natively allow you to set up them on-device. As an alternative, it’s good to both set up them over USB through a PC, a course of generally known as sideloading, or sideload an app that itself allows you to set up APKs.
ByteDance’s Pico, as compared, allows you to use the built-in file supervisor to put in APKs. On Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional, although, you’ll be able to’t sideload apps in any respect.
That is why having such an app on the shop is so important. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether or not Meta permitted it understanding that it had this functionality.
Final month, Meta pressured the developer of Cellular VR Station, one other app on the shop, to take away this functionality, noting that it “facilitates the set up of different apps”.
Thus, it appears doable that Meta will ask VR Android File Supervisor’s developer to do the identical. However for now, it is obtainable without cost, and works with Quest 3, Quest 3S, Quest 2, and Quest Professional.
