Quest’s New ‘Navigator’ UI Changing into Default As Horizon Feed To Be Eliminated

“Beginning” in Horizon OS v85, the brand new ‘Navigator’ UI will change into the default, and Horizon Feed will probably be “steadily” faraway from the OS.

In a Meta Group Boards put up, a ‘Group Supervisor’ with the deal with h.taylor introduced the upcoming modifications, set to reach within the subsequent model of the Horizon OS of Quest headsets:

As introduced throughout Join, we’ve been testing Navigator and can ramp up the rollout later this 12 months, beginning in v85. As Navigator rolls out, we’ll additionally start steadily sunsetting the Horizon Feed in VR.

What’s altering

• Navigator will change into the default touchdown expertise when customers activate their headset.

• Navigator brings experiences, buddies and settings collectively in a single place.

• As a part of this shift, we’ll be sunsetting the Horizon Feed in VR.

Horizon OS v83 began rolling out in November, and there is no set date for the arrival of v85.

Navigator Changing into Default

For the reason that launch of Oculus Go over seven years in the past, Meta’s standalone VR working system has seen quite a few visible modifications, however the normal interface structure remained basically the identical.

You had a floating horizontal menu bar barely under you, referred to as the Common Menu, exhibiting the time and your machine battery ranges and containing shortcuts to key system interfaces, in addition to a mix of your most up-to-date and ultimately a couple of of your favourite apps. All 2D interfaces, together with system options just like the app Library, Fast Settings, and Notifications, opened as 2D home windows, handled like some other.

Then, in Might final 12 months, Meta began a really gradual rollout of a full Horizon OS UI overhaul, referred to as ‘Navigator’, which strikes the principle system interfaces like Library, Fast Settings, Notifications and Digital camera into a brand new giant overlay that seems over each immersive and 2D apps.

With Navigator, system interfaces now not shift round when opening different home windows, and it is simpler to launch new apps. Navigator’s library additionally lets you pin as much as 10 gadgets, considerably akin to the Begin Menu on Home windows.

At launch, Navigator additionally had a murky grey background with an oval form. It was seemingly supposed to enhance distinction. However in addition to obscuring your view of what was behind it, be it passthrough or a digital world, it simply did not look good. So Meta removed that and made citing Navigator dim the background as an alternative.

With Horizon OS v83 PTC in October, Meta began rolling out an advanced model of Navigator, which it teased at Join 2025.

The advanced Navigator has a brand new Worlds tab for Horizon Worlds locations, and also you now not see worlds in your app Library in any respect. Talking of the Library, it now options interleaving offset rows, much like Apple’s visionOS.

The brand new Navigator additionally has a brand new overlay-level Individuals tab with shortcuts to your mates, in addition to a You tab that exhibits your avatar and allows you to change your lively standing.

Lastly, the brand new Navigator allows you to simply conceal or present all of your 2D home windows by double urgent the Meta button on the correct Contact controller, or for hand monitoring, opening your proper palm and double tapping your thumb to your index finger.

Horizon Feed Being Eliminated

Horizon Feed is the default 2D app that launches while you chilly boot your Quest headset.

Initially merely referred to as ‘Discover’, the feed exhibits you steered Horizon Worlds locations, retailer apps, VR movies, Instagram reels, and on-line followers, in addition to steered buddies to “catch up” with and apps to “bounce again in” to.

The Group Boards put up tells builders that the model of Horizon Feed contained in the headset “is just not a high-intent floor, and customers usually see it with no particular intent to browse or buy apps”.

“Due to that, it traditionally has not pushed sturdy entitlement conversion, and we don’t anticipate important income impression for the overwhelming majority of builders”, the put up reads.

That basically appears to be Meta admitting that Horizon Feed is one thing that almost all Quest house owners simply shut instantly on booting the headset, like an undesirable popup, and wasn’t profitable at getting folks to purchase the apps that it steered.

The approaching removing of Horizon Feed from Horizon OS comes as Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth steered that the corporate’s repeated push to Quest house owners to make use of Horizon Worlds got here at “an expense of person expertise”, vowing to “let VR be what it’s, what it does” and “focus much more on the third-party content material library, the ecosystem that is developed there”.