Digital actuality is enjoyable, and VR headsets have come a great distance when it comes to capabilities. For instance, coloration passthrough on the Quest 3 could be helpful if you wish to retain some consciousness of your environment whilst you’re flailing about taking part in Beat Saber. Nevertheless, it does have its limitations.

If you happen to’re like me, you seemingly have your cellphone with you always and verify it ceaselessly. The issue with VR is that even with passthrough, it is not all the time simple to see what’s in your display. And for those who’re actually like me, then you definitely’re most likely blind as a bat however too cussed to make use of your glasses along with your VR headset, making the passthrough view much more difficult to make use of when making an attempt to learn textual content in your cellphone show.

Luckily, Motorola has an answer for Quest 3 and Quest 3S house owners that allows you to use your cellphone in your VR headset. It could are available in fairly useful, though it is not with out its quirks, and never everybody can have entry to it.

What’s Good Join?

Motorola launched its Smart Connect app on the Meta Quest 3 earlier this as a simple approach to stream and management your cellphone from inside your headset. For the uninformed, Good Join launched in 2024 as a rebranding of the corporate’s Ready For software, which was beforehand launched in 2021 and basically serves as Motorola’s model of Samsung DeX.

Good Join lets customers join their telephones to computer systems or exterior shows to view their apps, share media between units, and even management a number of units with a single mouse and keyboard.

It is a fairly useful app, and there are a number of capabilities that make it a particularly great tool for extending your apps, content material, knowledge connections, and extra throughout units. It even lets you use your cellphone’s digicam as a webcam on your pc, making it a really versatile suite.

On the Quest 3, Good Join is not as strong as you will discover on linked shows and computer systems, however it does include two major capabilities: app streaming and cellular desktop. The primary helps you to stream particular person apps whereas the latter creates a desktop-like expertise, full with notifications, windowing, and extra.

Getting arrange

Organising Good Join on the Quest 3 or Quest 3S is pretty easy. After all, it goes with out saying that you’re going to want a Motorola cellphone for this to work.

First, you must obtain the Good Join app from the Horizon Retailer. As soon as that is achieved, comply with the prompts to begin the method of syncing your units collectively, which would require scanning a QR code in your cellphone.

Open the Good Join app in your cellphone and faucet the + button within the prime nook. Choose VR headset, then Proceed pairing, and you must see a QR code seem, assuming you’ve got already begun the method in your Quest. Place the QR code inside the Quest 3 viewfinder, and your units will pair, and you will be prepared to make use of your cellphone out of your headset.

Utilizing my cellphone on my Quest

App streaming is the very first thing I attempted, because it’s probably the most simple method to make use of Good Join. You may choose from nearly any app in your cellphone to stream to the headset, and it will open in a phone-like view. You may as well use your cellphone to open any app in your VR headset by swiping up and sending it to Good Join.

What’s nice about that is that you could repeatedly scroll, view movies, and even ship messages straight out of your headset. You may as well have as much as three open and lively apps in a single window and simply transfer between them. You may as well resize some apps by rotating or utilizing the resize button up prime, which may open sure apps like Gmail in a tablet-like view. Sadly, this isn’t all the time the case, and never each app will scale correctly.

For some apps, akin to Instagram, you could be higher off utilizing the native Quest app, because it’s extra optimized for the VR show than the Good Join model. Nevertheless, what makes this a pleasant various is that you’ve got entry to apps you in any other case would not be capable of obtain natively on the Quest.

I am a YouTube Music lover, so I am thrilled to lastly be capable of take heed to my tunes from my favourite music streaming apps on my headset. Music sounds superb on the Quest 3 audio system, and calls fill my ears, making them simple to listen to, though that half is usually a bit overwhelming.

Then there’s the desktop mode, which mainly turns your cellphone into a pc. Just like the way it works on linked shows, you are introduced with a desktop-like house display, with some app icons already on the desktop whereas others are accessible by way of an app drawer.

This feature is extra versatile than app streaming, as you may open a number of apps concurrently, whatever the system’s orientation. These open in windowed views, permitting you to rearrange them as you want, similar to on a pc.

Desktop mode additionally grants you quick access to cellphone options, as you are only a faucet away out of your notifications and fast settings, in addition to different settings and choices scattered all through the desktop house display.

Surprisingly, whether or not you are utilizing app streaming or the desktop mode, the app expertise is comparatively easy. It isn’t good by any means, and the outcomes could rely in your Wi-Fi connection; nonetheless, it is a pretty stable implementation for anybody trying to make use of their cellphone with their Quest 3.

It isn’t all roses

As I discussed earlier than, there are some quirks with how apps behave on Good Join for the Quest. For example, with app streaming, whereas most apps you utilize are seemingly displayed vertically, horizontal apps (often video games) could have hassle and typically will not open in any respect. I discover it helps to faucet the broaden button above the app to assist issues alongside, and often it ought to work. Nevertheless, this concern additionally extends to YouTube, for instance, which does not scale correctly in horizontal orientation except you are in full-screen mode.

The keyboard expertise can also be fairly wonky and oftentimes complicated. It is a way more restricted expertise than the conventional Quest keyboard, so you do not have choices like swiping to sort or phrase ideas. Which means, if you make a mistake, there isn’t any simple approach to right it with out going again or deleting.

The issue is, the keyboard view and what’s on the app do not all the time sync up accurately. If I transfer the cursor again to right a phrase on the keyboard view, the cursor within the app will keep in place and begin deleting or including phrases on the finish of my sentence. So it’s going to look right on the keyboard however not on the app. I can all the time transfer the cursor within the app to right the phrase, however then it will not do the identical on the keyboard view.

The one method I discovered I might get across the typing expertise is to only use the Gboard’s voice typing, which is available in clutch. Nevertheless, that is solely accessible within the app view, not on the Quest keyboard.

However maybe my largest drawback is scaling. Whether or not you are utilizing app streaming or desktop mode, the buttons are fairly small, and you will not wish to use hand-tracking to navigate by means of your apps.

In desktop mode, this concern could be considerably mitigated by adjusting the decision earlier than getting into the mode, after which stepping into and adjusting the desktop mode show choices (that are handily positioned within the taskbar), however it’s nonetheless difficult to see a number of the smaller components, particularly these tucked inside the taskbar. To exit a full-screen app on this mode, swipe down from the highest of the window till a bar seems, then click on the X button.

It isn’t probably the most intuitive expertise, and sadly, many of those points have been carried over from the desktop model of Good Join.

A good begin

I hate having to completely interrupt my VR immersion by eradicating the headset to verify my cellphone. That is why Good Join appears like a godsend for me, as I can simply verify my apps from inside the headset and rapidly resume no matter sport I am taking part in.

Now, Motorola ought to attempt to optimize the UI a bit to work higher on VR headsets. Buttons must be greater, the keyboard expertise wants some enhancements, notifications needs to be extra prevalent in each modes, and I’d like to see extra capabilities from the desktop model of Good Join, akin to cellphone mirroring.

Nonetheless, it is a good begin, and for those who’re the proprietor of a Quest 3 and a Motorola phone, you must give Good Join a strive.