Focus Awareness Required for All Apps Starting September 1

NOTE: As of September 1, 2021, all Quest apps have been made focus aware. Most apps already support focus awareness and new apps are required to support per the Virtual Reality Check (VRC) Guidelines. Please refer to our documentation for more information. Thank you.

Starting September 1, 2021, all Quest apps on the Store or App Lab will be made focus aware. This change ensures people can reliably access the universal menu and system actions as overlays without interrupting the app.

As we focus on building an immersive entertainment platform, it’s important that people can stay engaged in experiences without being pulled away to access system functionality. Last year, we introduced immersive overlays to let people access the Quest universal menu without returning to the home environment. Earlier this year, we tested the Universal Menu Overlay experimental feature, allowing people to enable all apps to become focus aware so that system interfaces always appear as immersive overlays. In March, we also made focus awareness a requirement for newly submitted apps to the Quest Store and App Lab.

Together, immersive overlays have become the preferred way to use system capabilities without leaving the current app. As this becomes a system default, people will be able to consistently multitask while staying engaged in their app and you can benefit from your audience sharing media, purchasing content, and engaging socially in a more integrated way.

See our Overlay Design Guide for best practices to consider so users can access system UI without impacting your app’s experience. Our documentation contains further guidance on enabling and handling changes in input focus depending on your app framework:

Between now and September, we’ll continue to provide the experimental Universal Menu Overlays feature to automatically make all apps focus aware. Use this option to test how your existing app handles the appearance of overlay system UI.

We believe that enabling Quest users to access their system UI from anywhere in VR will lead to even more engaging, meaningful experiences in your apps. If you have any questions about the upcoming change, let us know in the Developer Forums.