Quest App Lab now has almost 850 apps, more than doubling the main store
A better option for VR developers than sideloading apps.
- The Quest App Lab allows smaller developers to publish their VR apps and games for Quest headsets without being listed in the main Quest Store.
- The program now contains 837 apps, more than double of the apps in the main store, since its launch last year.
- The best rated App Lab game is platformer Daedalus, while the most popular game is Gorilla Tag.
The Quest App Lab store now contains more than double of the apps within the main Quest Store at 837 apps approved since the launch of the program last year. The Quest Store currently offers 341 apps in comparison, but has been live for more than two and a half years.
Meta created the Quest App Lab program in February 2021 alongside the v25 update to allow indie or smaller developers to publish their apps on Quest 2 and other Quest VR headsets without official approval. The apps and games would receive a store page, but could only be accessed through a direct link and would not appear through search. This gave developers a wider audience than through sideloading apps and publish with less strict guidelines than the main store.
The Quest App Lab has approved 837 apps within a year since the store launched on Feb. 3, 2021, according to App Lab DB submissions. Road to VR crunched the numbers and found the average of App Lab approvals at 2.7 apps per day, while the main Quest Store only had an average of 0.34 apps per day from its launch. The report also noted that "the number of Oculus PC applications sits around 1,400, with Go applications at 1,150, and SteamVR applications around 5,000" for context on Meta's curation of VR apps for its store.
While you won't find App Lab games on our list of best Quest 2 games since they are not officially supported, there are plenty of highly rated and popular games in the program. According to Road to VR's charts, platformer Daedalus is currently the best rated game holding a 4.9 rating with 60 reviews. Meanwhile, multiplayer game Gorilla Tag is the most popular with a 4.7 rating at almost 11,000 reviews and more than doubles the reviews of the second highest reviewed game, multiplayer shooter Pavlov Shack Beta.
Meta Quest 2
$300 at Amazon$300 at Best Buy$300 at Oculus
The Quest 2 offers increased power, resolution, and flexibility over the original virtual headset. It is a complete, all-in-one headset that does not need to be tethered to a PC or smartphone in order to work.