A 17-year-old coder found a way to unlink your Facebook account from your Oculus Quest 2 headset
This tool ditches the Facebook requirement, but at the cost of some key features.
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Earlier this week, amassive outagetook down Facebook and related services for most of the day. During the outage, anyone who wanted to use their Oculus Quest 2 had to put theirVR adventures on holdbecause you need to be logged into a Facebook account to use the headset or access the Oculus Store. If Facebook is down, the headset becomes a $300 sci-fi prop.
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Some people (myself included) are always looking for ways around the Quest’s Facebook requirement for occasions like this, or so we can delete our Facebook accounts and still use our headsets. Enter a17-year-old coderwho created an interesting way around the requirement.
Oculessis a sideloadable tool that unlinks your Facebook account from your Quest 2 VR headset (thanksUploadVRfor finding this). To sideload anything on the Quest 2, you need to access Developer Mode on the device, which requires a phone number or payment details (you won’t be charged) for verification by Facebook.
Once that’s set up, that’s the last time you have to deal with Facebook on your headset. From here you can sideload apps from places likeSideQuestVR, which don’t require you to have a Facebook account to use and access. The important thing is that the hand tracking remains unaffected, so you should be able to play your favorite VR games likeHalf-Life Alyxwith no issue.
There is a downside to ditching Facebook altogether from the headset. There are several features you simply won’t be able to use, like:
Thankfully, the creator of Oculessposted a list of alternative softwareyou can sideload that’ll fill these feature gaps.
Considering how people feel aboutFacebook these days, it’s not surprising that some VR gamers want a way to play without having anything to do with the social media giant.
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You can download Oculessright hereif you want to try it for yourself. The tool’s creator, Bastian, also has ahelpful video tutorialthat’ll walk you through the process along.
Jorge is a hardware writer from the enchanted lands of New Jersey. When he’s not filling the office with the smell of Pop-Tarts, he’s reviewing all sorts of gaming hardware, from laptops with the latest mobile GPUs to gaming chairs with built-in back massagers. He’s been covering games and tech for over ten years and has written for Dualshockers, WCCFtech, Tom’s Guide, and a bunch of other places on the world wide web.
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