The Meta Quest smartphone app is being rebranded to Meta Horizon next week.
The announcement comes after the app recently got an overhaul that changed the design and made store pages, search results, and other content significantly faster to load. Previously the Meta Quest app stood out as the slowest feeling app on my phone, and now it feels as fast as any other.
The redesign brought a light mode to the app for the first time, which can be seen in the screenshot above. It also makes friends and the algorithmic “feed” more prominent, requiring tapping small icons at the top to access the store or your headset settings. Casting, for example, is now two taps away instead of one, while your app library is now buried deep in a menu.
David Heaney
The name change is part of Meta’s wider rebrand of the Quest software platform to Horizon. The Quest operating system is being renamed Horizon OS, and the Quest Store is being renamed the Horizon Store next month.
The change could result in a confusing transition period for new Quest headset buyers, who would expect to find a Meta Quest app on their app store of choice rather than a Meta Horizon app. For many people the Horizon brand is still strongly associated with Horizon Worlds, Meta’s “metaverse” platform similar to Rec Room and Roblox.
The purpose of the rebrand, though, is to expand the platform to headsets from other companies, starting with ASUS and Lenovo. Quest will remain the brand for Meta’s first-party hardware, while Horizon will be the brand for the software stack, including the platform and store.
