Meta has begun opening up Quest App Lab, making previously unlisted games and apps viewable on the main store.
Introduced in 2021 as a secondary distribution method for on-platform app sales, Quest App Lab is being retired soon to make the Quest Store more open. Taking place in two stages, today’s first step sees Meta’s introduce an App Lab tab to the store. This allows Quest owners to browse for App Lab apps with greater ease and previously, finding App Lab apps required the URL or exact search term.
This follows Meta removing the previous pop-up warning when checking App Lab pages, which was recently replaced by a quieter on-page disclaimer. However, only 100 apps are currently viewable publicly and the selection criteria is unclear. It’s unknown whether more App Lab apps will gradually appear over time.
David Heaney
The second phase will follow at an unconfirmed date. That will kill App Lab and merge it completely into the main Quest Store with less restrictive approval criteria. While submitted apps will no longer be rejected for subjective quality reasons, they must still meet “basic technical, content, and privacy requirements.”
App Lab’s retirement joined previous news that Meta will rebrand the Meta Quest system software to Meta Horizon OS, turning the Meta Quest Store into the Meta Horizon Store. This approach also sees them providing Horizon OS to third-party headset makers like ASUS and Lenovo, giving them the same core software and platform services as Quest headsets.
