Meta Quest v56 Update: Hand Tracking Improvements, System-Level Live Captions, Facebook Livestreaming, & More

Summer’s well underway, and whether you’re hitting the links, jonesing for a beach day, or otherwise basking in the glow of vacation, Meta Quest is here to help you make the most of it. Our v56 update is jam-packed with new features to improve your experience, including improvements to hand tracking, a new way to squad up in Meta Horizon Worlds, live captions at the system level, the triumphant return of livestreaming to Facebook, and more.

Details below, and as always, this is your friendly reminder that our software updates roll out gradually. If you don’t see the v56 update yet, don’t panic. It’s on its way and should be in your virtual hands soon.

All Hands on Deck

With V56, we’re rolling out Hand Tracking 2.2, which focuses on hands responsiveness, bringing the experience closer to controllers. This includes up to 40% latency reduction in typical usage and up to 75% during fast movement. We've also made additional improvements to make fast-paced games even more responsive. Try out the new Move Fast demo app, or start sweating with Litesport or VR Workout.

We expect even more improvements to come as we launch Quest 3 later this year, providing an immersive interaction experience—stay tuned!

Livestream to Facebook

Quest offers you daring exploits, otherworldly adventures, and immersive experiences you can’t have anywhere else. And now, we’re rolling out an experiment to help people share those experiences with friends in real time via livestreaming to Facebook.

Bring others into your VR experience by going live on Facebook while you play your favorite game. To get started, just add your Facebook account to the same Accounts Center as your Meta account and you’ll be good to go.

Back by popular demand, the livestreaming to Facebook feature was redesigned to be as seamless and easy-to-use as possible, with high-quality video output and persistent access to a live chat panel so you can stay in touch with your friends as you go about your stream. As a reminder, this will roll out gradually, so not everyone will have access to this feature at first.

New Ways to Stay Connected

We’re making it easier to connect with friends across Chats and Parties. Now, when you start a call, a chat thread is automatically created with all the members invited to the call. You can also start a call from a 1:1 or group chat thread, and all members of that thread are invited to your call.

These changes let you easily invite your friends to travel with you to an app or world. We’ve made Invites easily accessible on profile cards and in chat threads so you can get into the game faster.

Accessibility Updates: Live Captions + Button Remapping On Demand

Subtitles are valuable, whether you’re hard of hearing, a member of the Deaf community, or just happen to enjoy having them on. They improve the user experience for people who are taking a break from loud volume, are looking to better understand conversations, and find them helpful to remain focused. And now, we’re giving people system-level live captions to improve the Quest experience. For now, live captions are available in Meta Quest TV, Explore, and the Meta Quest Store in-headset. Our goal is to improve usability and create a positive experience for everyone while also increasing accessibility for people who are hard of hearing or Deaf. And we’ll explore the possibility of expanding this feature to other experiences in the future.

Whether you’re an avid gamer or a productivity power user, customization can be key to a positive experience. So being able to personalize your controller button configuration is a big plus—both for people with dexterity challenges and without. That’s why we’re also giving people the ability to swap buttons, create custom layouts, and otherwise tailor their controller settings to best meet their unique needs. You can find this new feature in Settings → Accessibility → Mobility.

Inclusive design is good design, and we’re excited to make the Quest experience better for everyone.

Automatically Power Headset to Update

There are few things as frustrating as putting on your headset, ready to jump into your next VR adventure, only to find out that the software’s out of date. That’s why we’re excited to introduce automatic power to update functionality! Now, when your headset’s charging, it’ll automatically power on and perform seamless app and OS updates and cloud backups so you can get back into the action with as little friction as possible.

Your microphone and cameras will always remain off until you put your headset on and press the power button. You can control this feature from Software Updates in System Settings.

If you happen to put the headset on while it’s charging and an update or backup is in progress and press the power button, you should see a notification letting you know the status so you aren’t kept in the dark. Click here for more information.

Introducing System-Wide Local Dimming on Quest Pro

We’ve heard overwhelmingly positive praise from the community for the improved display quality seen with local dimming, as well as their desire to enable local dimming more widely. In this release, we’re adding a new toggle in Experimental Settings to turn on system-wide local dimming on Quest Pro. While the setting is off by default, you can turn it on to enable local dimming across all apps (unless a developer opts out). People who turn on local dimming should see improved color contrast, especially in dark scenes.

Check out our v56 Release Notes for a more comprehensive look at all the changes. We’ll see you next time for a new Meta Quest software update.