Typically, when a company gives its products a UI overhaul, the new design focuses on fixing problems people complained about in the old version. Meta has been working on it for two years now, but the end result isn’t exactly getting the reception Meta was hoping for.
Ever since the update started rolling out to everyone a few weeks ago, I’ve received countless messages from friends (and the parents of my son’s friends) asking how to revert to the old UI. The answer is…you can’t. The follow-up questions then usually revolve around how to do all the things they used to do every day, since many of the most common tasks now require several additional clicks or menu selections to find.
Meta designed this new Navigator UI, as it’s called, to make it dead simple to jump into VR experiences in record time. It absolutely achieves that goal, but as is the case any time you prioritize one specific feature, everything else suffers because of it. If you’re confounded by the new Meta Quest UI and can’t figure out what to do, here are a few tips and tricks to get you going.
Get those floating windows out of my face
Meta’s Navigator UI launched with a brand-new two-layer window system, which has become an immediate annoyance for many people. Pressing the Meta/home button on the right controller now always brings up the app launcher, but all other system windows and apps run in floating windows. The problem is that pressing that Meta/home button again doesn’t hide the windows; it only hides the app launcher.
Meta also completely redesigned the universal menu bar at the bottom, which no longer lets you pin apps, quickly close floating windows, or use the virtual camera. Instead, you’ll need to double-click the Meta/home button on the right controller to hide the floating windows. It’s possible that Meta explained this in one of those pop-up tutorial windows, but many people don’t read them, and hiding this kind of important functionality behind a weird gesture makes users very frustrated.
Some versions of the Navigator UI now include a virtual “hide windows” button on the app launcher hot bar, which is at least a moderate improvement to this awful dual-layer design, but it’s still a lot of button presses to achieve what a single home button press used to do.
How to update, pin, or uninstall an app
In the old app launcher, every app or game’s icon had a three-dot menu button in the top-right corner, letting you perform additional actions on that app. Things like pinning the app to the hotbar, updating it, checking permissions, or even uninstalling were in a pretty obvious place that’s similar to smartphone UIs. The Navigator app launcher just shows a series of icons with no obvious additional actions.
To find this hidden menu, hover your cursor over the app or game’s icon, then press and hold the trigger button on your controller until the menu appears. From here, you can pin an app to the top of the app drawer, lock it from changes, hide it (usually used for games you own but no longer play), update, adjust settings, go to the store page (see details), or uninstall it (remove from library).
This one is yet another UI change that hides common actions, and it’s quite frankly puzzling how this one was ever green-lit from testing.
Closing an app
Believe it or not, I have to write a tutorial on how to close a running app. That’s how bad this new UI is. While you were playing an immersive game in the previous UI, you could press the Meta/home button, then click Quit on the menu that appears. It was simple! It was easy! But Meta had to go and make it difficult.
In Navigator, pressing the Meta/home button just opens the app launcher. You could click on another immersive game or app, which will automatically close the open immersive app, but sometimes you don’t want to jump from app to app.
Instead, you’ll need to: press the Meta/home button on the right controller to open the app launcher, then look at the small row of icons located on the hotbar at the bottom of the app launcher. You should see the icon for the running app. Go ahead and click that, then click Quit on the menu that appears. Yet again, a common action that used to be a single click now needlessly requires additional steps.
How to take a screenshot, record a video, or cast to a TV
If you haven’t figured out the theme by now, these three common Camera tasks now take several additional clicks to perform in the new Navigator UI. To save time, here are three ways you can take a screenshot, record a video, or cast to a TV:
1. Press the Meta/home button on the right controller to open the app launcher. Tap the pink/orange camera icon, then click the action you want to perform. This is the easiest way to cast to a TV.
2. If you can’t find the camera in the app drawer, you can click on the Quick Settings icon, located on the hotbar at the bottom of the app launcher. Then, you’ll click the camera icon in the row of icons to open the camera drawer. This is the second fastest way to cast to a TV.
3. To quickly take a screenshot in some games, press and hold the Meta/home button, then quickly press the trigger on the same controller.
4. To quickly record a video in some games, press and hold the Meta/home button, then press and hold the trigger on the same controller until you hear a “start recording” sound. Perform the same home button/trigger combo to stop the video.
I’m already exhausted, and I’m sure you are too. On the bright side, the new camera bar that appears when you follow steps 1 and 2 above offers much more functionality than the old menu. Try clicking camera settings in that menu and play around with the available options! You can default the recording camera to third-person view, make it Instagram-ready with a 9:16 aspect ratio, add image stability, and more.
Where did settings go?
Finding settings used to be a fairly simple task. You’d press the home button, then tap on quick settings, and a large, lovely Settings button would be right there. The new UI didn’t change these steps much, but it made the settings button absolutely tiny and nearly impossible to see. I don’t know why Meta wants to hide this so badly, but here’s how to find it:
1. Press the Meta/home button on the right controller to open the app launcher.
2. Tap the quick settings icon on the hotbar below the app launcher.
3. When quick settings appears, look for the small gear icon to the left of the Wi-Fi icon, then click it to open settings.
It’s just not good…
Look, I don’t like to complain about updates or UI changes because, most of the time, even the most dramatic changes can be positive ones once you get used to them. But Navigator is something entirely different. While it makes launching apps quite a bit faster, it does so at the expense of nearly every other action Meta Quest gamers commonly do.
Meta received a lot of criticism for this update during the testing phase, including plenty of posts on social media, in their own forums, and feedback through the official process, but they still went through and pushed the new UI out to everyone without making fundamental changes.
Meta has had a huge problem with buggy updates in the past, and while this update isn’t buggy, it’s bad in a very different way. The only way to roll back the menu changes is to use Quest Games Optimizer, which you’ll need to sideload, but the app also opens a ton of customization and performance options that aren’t available otherwise. QGO is a truly great app that I use every time I play on my Quest, but even if you don’t get it, you at least know how to get things done in the new Navigator UI.