About Meta Horizon OS Design Guidelines
Overview
Meta Horizon OS Design is a set of human interface guidelines and resources for building immersive experiences on Meta Quest devices. It covers foundational design concepts, interaction patterns, UI components, and best practices for mixed reality and virtual reality applications.
The documentation targets developers and designers creating apps or games for Meta Horizon OS. It distinguishes itself from standard 2D UI guidelines by focusing on spatial computing inputs such as hand tracking, controllers, voice, passthrough, and spatial anchors.
Key Benefits
- Provides explicit guidance on six input modalities: hands, controllers, voice, head movement, passthrough, and scene understanding.
- Covers spatial anchors for placing stable and persistent virtual objects in real-world environments.
- Includes accessibility strategies tailored for mobility, vision, hearing, and interaction needs.
- Delivers localization best practices covering planning, UI design, string management, and testing for global audiences.
- Documents health and safety guidelines to help developers protect users in combined physical and virtual spaces.
How It Works
Developers navigate the Foundations section to learn core immersive design concepts such as passthrough and scene understanding. They then move to the Interactions section to select and implement input modalities — hands, controllers, voice, or head movement — following the documented best practices. The Components section provides ready-to-use UI patterns like buttons, sliders, tooltips, and avatars that developers copy or adapt directly into their projects.
Use Cases
- VR game developers designing locomotion systems that prioritize user comfort and preference.
- Mixed reality app creators blending virtual elements with the physical world using passthrough technology.
- Accessibility specialists ensuring immersive experiences accommodate users with mobility, vision, or hearing impairments.
- Localization teams preparing Meta Horizon OS apps for distribution across multiple languages and regions.
- UI designers adapting 2D interfaces such as panels and splash screens into spatial layouts for VR.
- Haptic feedback engineers designing touch-based sensations that enhance realism and user engagement.
Why Choose This Product
This resource is best suited for developers and designers already targeting the Meta Quest ecosystem who need official, maintained design patterns and interaction guidelines. It does not cover non-Meta VR platforms such as SteamVR or Apple Vision Pro, and the advanced input features like spatial anchors and scene understanding require compatible Meta Quest hardware.
