Meta is eradicating the power to see cellphone notifications in your Quest

Meta is discontinuing a function that allows you to see notifications out of your smartphone whilst you’re utilizing a Quest VR headset, in response to the patch notes for the Quest’s v60 replace. The corporate launched the power to see iOS and Android notifications within the headset in 2021.

Meta didn’t elaborate additional within the patch notes about why it’s eradicating the function, and it’s a disgrace that it’s doing so. With out these notifications, it’s troublesome to know what’s taking place in your smartphone whenever you’re absolutely immersed in your Quest until you pull the headset up out of your eyes — which forces you to cease what you’re doing in your Quest.

That mentioned, when you’ve got a Quest 3, the headset’s full-color passthrough is nice sufficient to see your smartphone’s display for light-weight duties like skimming notifications. However my colleague Adi Robertson mentioned that studying cellphone screens on the Quest Professional was “just about inconceivable,” and in my expertise, the Quest 2’s grainy black-and-white passthrough is a horrible method to attempt to have a look at your cellphone.

Whereas it’s disappointing that v60 is taking away a helpful function, the replace is including some good new issues, too. There’s a brand new format utility app that “helps you spatially measure, align and visualize actual world objects instantly in your bodily area.” Quest profiles will present “details about your shared experiences and connections” whenever you go to somebody’s profile (although you may select to maintain that data personal). The Quest Professional’s CPU and GPU will get increased clock speeds whenever you’re in blended actuality functions, and you may make your cloud backups end-to-end encrypted by including a PIN.

You’ll be able to learn the total particulars of the v60 replace on the Meta Quest weblog and within the detailed launch notes. The replace is rolling out now, although Meta says that when you don’t have it but, it “ought to be in your digital fingers quickly.”