Browser Developer Release Notes

Browser 35.1

• Dolby Atmos: Supported websites can now play audio in Dolby Atmos, creating a spatial sound experience that puts the listener inside the center of the action.
• Spatial Audio: All websites will now play stereo sounds coming from the position of the Browser.
• Logitech MX Ink: WebXR support for new 6DoF pen controller with 2 buttons and 2 pressure sensitive areas

• Security fixes
• Reliability fixes
• Bug fixes

Browser 35.0

• Drag and Drop: Redesigned user experience when dragging tabs

• Updated to Chromium Milestone 128: New and improved standards support and security updates.
• Security fixes
• Reliability fixes
• Bug fixes

Browser 34.5

• Reliability fixes
• Bug fixes

Browser 34.4

• The tab bar is now hidden if there is only one tab in a panel. You can change this behavior in Browser settings.
• The Speculation Rules API now works in Browser, and we’re gradually rolling out support for other page preloading technologies. Preloading can be disabled in Browser settings.

• Security fixes
• Reliability fixes
• Bug fixes

Browser 34.3

• WebXR: transform is now provided for the origin reset event

• Security fixes
• Reliability fixes
• Bug fixes

Browser 34.2

• WebXR: add experimental support for unbounded spaces

• Security fixes
• Reliability fixes
• Bug fixes

Browser 34.1

• WebXR Multimodal Input: If hands are enabled in WebXR, you can now get one hand and one controller. In addition, the non-primary inputs can now be tracked in the session’s trackedSources attribute.
• Background Fetch API: The Background Fetch API has been enabled and can now be used by websites to download content to be used while offline.

• Fixes crash when a video resumes after the headset was turned off.
• Security fixes
• Reliability fixes
• Bug fixes

Browser 34.0

• Improved the performance of the browser UI. Actions like opening or switching tabs are now snappier.
• Overall performance of the browser has been improved through compiler optimizations.

• Security fixes
• Reliability fixes
• Bug fixes

Meta Quest Browser 33.3

• Push Notifications: Browser now supports sending push notifications. To enable them, sites must request permissions to send notifications.

• WebXR: Depth sensing implementation has been updated to support the latest spec. Older implementations will continue to work with a warning.
• Security fixes
• Reliability fixes
• Bug fixes

Meta Quest Browser 33.2

• Tab Dragging Improvements: added support for dragging with direct touch using a pinching gesture.
• Full Screen Improvements: we’ve simplified the UI and added new functionality! You can now select from multiple screen size options and control the brightness of your immersive environment while watching full screen videos.

• Security fixes
• Reliability fixes
• Bug fixes

Meta Quest Browser 33.1

• The PDF Reader extension: No longer experimental and available to install from the Extensions page, allowing users to view online PDF content.
• Full Screen Improvements: Some users will get new full-screen controls; we’ve simplified the UI and added new functionality! You can now select from multiple screen size options and control the brightness of your immersive environment while watching full screen videos.

• Improved speed on omnibar auto-complete suggestions
• Bug fixes surrounding audio playback while Browser is in background
• WebXR joint names adjusted to match W3C specification
• Assorted crash fixes

Meta Quest Browser 33.0

• Draggable Tabs: Long pressing the new tab button will now create a draggable tab!
• WebXR: Fixed a timing issue when using hands-as-controllers and re-enabled the feature

• Updated to Chromium Milestone 124: New and improved standards support and security updates.
• Bug fixes and improvements to Full Screen mode, Extensions, and the New Tab Page
• WebXR fixes where the wrong controller type was showing up for Quest Pro
• Security fixes
• Reliability fixes
• Performance improvements

Meta Quest Browser 32.3

• Browser is now ~15% faster with Profile Guided Optimization: From this version forward, we’re making the browser faster with a compiler optimization technique called Profile Guided Optimization (PGO). This technique makes the most performance critical parts of the code run faster!
• Improved New Tab Page: Users should see faster load times, regional content, and removal or resizing of some shelves.

• PDF Reader: A new PDF Reader extension will be available to install from the Extensions page, allowing users to view online PDF content.

• Security fixes
• Reliability fixes
• Bug fixes

Meta Quest Browser 32.2

• Browser Extensions: Beta release with support for selected Browser Extensions. LastPass available for installation from Browser settings.

• Improved New Tab Page: Users should see faster load times, regional content, and removal or resizing of some shelves.

• Security fixes
• Reliability fixes
• Performance improvements
• Bug fixes

Meta Quest Browser 32.1

• New windows: Now available to all users: Create new Meta Quest Browser windows through the options menu (three-dot menu) or by right clicking a link.

• Browser Extensions: Initial rollout of support for selected Browser Extensions. This is a Beta release, currently with LastPass available for installation.
• Persistent audio: Media will now continue to play when you switch to a new tab in the same window! You can mute a tab by clicking the ‘volume’ icon on the playing tab.
• Improved New Tab Page: Users should see faster load times, regional content, and removal or resizing of some shelves.

• Security fixes
• Reliability fixes
• Performance improvements
• Bug fixes

Meta Quest Browser 32.0

• WebXR gamepad updates: Gamepad info for the quest 3 controller in WebXR will now report:
  • Thumb proximity to the top face of the controller
  • Index finger proximity to the trigger
  • Pointedness the index finger is. 0 = fully pointed, 1 = finger on the surface
  • Position of the index finger on the trigger
  • Force of the index finger on the trigger. After pulling the trigger, this will return the additional force from the index finger
• WebXR: Experimental support for body tracking
• WebGPU: Support for WebGPU (!)

• Browser Extensions: Initial rollout of support for selected Browser Extensions. This is a Beta release, currently with LastPass available for installation.
• New windows: Create new Browser windows through the options menu (three-dot menu) or by right clicking a link.
• Persistent audio: Media will now continue to play when you switch to a new tab in the same window! You can mute a tab by clicking the ‘volume’ icon on the playing tab.
• Improved New Tab Page: Users should see faster load times, regional content, and removal of some shelves.

• Updated to Chromium Milestone 122: For more information about new and improved standards support, see Chromium Revision
• Security fixes
• Reliability fixes
• Bug fixes

Meta Quest Browser 31.4 (available on OS v62+ only)

• WebXR: Add support for simultaneous hands and controllers.
• Tabs in immersive: Your Browser tabs will now be available across immersive applications.

• New Windows: Create new Browser windows through the options menu (three-dot menu) or by right clicking a link.
• Persistent audio: Media will now continue to play when you switch to a new tab in the same window! You can mute a tab by clicking the ‘volume’ icon on the playing tab.
• Improved New Tab Page: Users should see faster load times, regional content, and removal of some shelves.
• Improved Fullscreen Media Experience: Users will experience less distracted viewing by detecting idle interaction, preventing on-screen cursor and accidental hand interactions.

• Security fixes
• Reliability fixes
• Bug fixes

Meta Quest Browser 31.3

• New Windows: Create new Browser windows through the options menu (three-dot menu) or by right clicking a link.
• Persistent audio: Media will now continue to play when you switch to a new tab in the same window! You can mute a tab by clicking the ‘volume’ icon on the playing tab.
• Improved New Tab Page: Users should see faster load times, regional content, and removal of some shelves.
• Improved Fullscreen Media Experience: Users will experience less distracted viewing by detecting idle interaction, preventing on-screen cursor and accidental hand interactions.

• The User Agent string no longer contains the term “SamsungBrowser/4.0”. For details see: https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/web/browser-specs/.
• Fixed a bug where some experiences would hang during navigation while in an immersive session.
• Bug fixes for more reliable multi-touch and hands interactions.
• Security fixes and other minor bug fixes.

Meta Quest Browser 31.2

• Improved New Tab Page: Users should see faster load times, regional content, and removal of some shelves.
• Improved Fullscreen Media Experience: Users will experience less distracted viewing by detecting idle interaction, preventing on-screen cursor and accidental hand interactions.

• Security fixes
• Reliability fixes
• Bug fixes

Oculus Browser 16.2

• Fixed a bug that was causing Chrome Dev Tools to fail to load Source Maps when debugging.
• Fixed a bug where WebXR Layer textures were being cleared incorrectly in certain situations.
• Fixed a bug where WebXR Hands API would return low-confidence joint information.

Oculus Browser 16.1

• Enabled support for WebXR Layers and Media Layers by default. See this page for more details.
• Fixed a bug where the WebXR ‘reset’ event was not handled properly.
• Fixed a bug with ‘local’ reference space returning the wrong thing.

Oculus Browser 16.0

• Updated to Chromium version 91 - For more information about new and improved standards support, see Chromium Revisions

Oculus Browser 15.1

• Enable WebXR Hand Tracking API by default instead of as an experimental feature.
• Made a change to WebXR Hand Tracking joint orientation to correctly match the WebXR specification. If you were previously using the experimental version of this feature, you may need to update your code and/or hands model.

Oculus Browser 15.0

• Updated to Chromium version 89 - For more information about new and improved standards support, see Chromium Revisions
• XRPose now contains linear and angular velocity for controller poses. See the WebXR Spec for more detail.

Oculus Browser 14.0

• Updated to Chromium version 88 - For more information about new and improved standards support, see Chromium Revisions

Oculus Browser 13.0

• Updated to Chromium version 87 - For more information about new and improved standards supporft, see Chromium Revisions

Oculus Browser 12.0

• Updated to Chromium version 86 - For more information about new and improved standards supporft, see Chromium Revisions

Oculus Browser 11.0

• Updated to Chromium version 84 - For more information about new and improved standards support, see Chromium Revisions
• New experimental developer support for Hand Tracking.
  • ThreeJS examples
  • A-Frame examples
• New experimental support for WebXR layers.
  • WebXR Layers samples

Oculus Browser 10.0

• Updated to Chromium version 83 - For more information about new and improved standards support, see Chromium Revisions.

Oculus Browser 9.0

• Removed WebVR support. Some immersive experiences may no longer work until sites update to the latest WebXR standard
• Updated to Chromium version 81 - For more information about new and improved standards support, see Chromium Revisions.

Oculus Browser 8.3

• An entirely new browser interface and experience, designed to be simple, elegant, and efficient.
  • This feature will only roll out to some users initially, but will eventually become available for everyone.
• Oculus Browser now loads desktop sites by default. This mode is better for the large browser windows in VR and desktop sites let you get more done.
  • You can change the current site you’re on back to mobile mode by clicking a button in the address bar.
  • This feature will only roll out to some users initially, but will eventually become available for everyone.

Oculus Browser 8.2

• Improvements to site compatibility, performance, and security

Oculus Browser 8.1

• Improvements to site compatibility, performance, and security
• WebXR improvements
  • Fixed incorrect ray rendering for Quest controller models
  • Added support for squeezestart / squeeze / squeezeend input events
  • Fixed incorrect visibilitychange event dispatching

Oculus Browser 8.0

• Update to Chromium version 79 - (see Chromium Revisions for new/improved standards support)
• General reliability improvements
• Experimental changes: controller emulation for Hand Tracking:
  • WebVR / WebXR experiences can be used with Hand Tracking by enabling “WebXR / WebVR experiences with Hands Tracking” option in about://flags
  • Hands will be represented as VR controllers in 3 different modes: “gaze and pinch,” “pointers only” and “hands and pointers”
• Added fixed foveation, high/low refresh rate features to WebXR
• Fixed wrong order of selectstart / select / selectend events in WebXR
• Improved performance for WebVR / WebXR experiences which set “alpha” WebGL context flag to “false”
• Enabled high-quality distortion for WebVR/WebXR experiences on Oculus Quest
• Enabled usage of framebufferScaleFactor with values different from 1.0; getNativeFramebufferScaleFactor() now reports the proper value too (was 1.0 all the time)

Oculus Browser 7.1

• General reliability improvements.
• Added WebXR Gamepad module support for Quest, Go, and GearVR.
• Fixed an issue with OVR_multiview2 WebGL extension that was reported as WebGL 1. Several broken THREE.JS examples should now work properly with this fix in place.

Oculus Browser 7.0

• Updated to Chromium version 77. See Chromium Revisions for new/improved standards support.
• WebXR is enabled by default. Now both WebVR and WebXR are enabled. For more details see Using WebVR on WebXR Enabled Browsers.
• Fixed jittery rendering issue in WebVR / WebXR.
• Fixed issue with reading incorrect poses of VR controllers in WebVR which caused jittery rendering of VR controller models.
• Improved startup times.
• Fixed intermittent microphone issue.
• Made general reliability improvements.

Oculus Browser 6.2

• Added 60 FPS display support for enhanced media playback quality in full-screen mode.
• Changed the pointer type from a stylus to a finger.
• Enabled control of the page zoom level. To change the zoom level, click on the browser-resize button in the address bar. The zoom level you select will apply to all pages on that domain. An example of a domain is facebook.com or instagram.com.
• Provided users with an option to opt-out of browser telemetry and updated the Privacy Policy FAQ to include browser data collection and usage practices.

Oculus Browser 6.2

• Added 60 FPS display support for enhanced media playback quality in full-screen mode.
• Changed the pointer type from a stylus to a finger.
• Enabled control of the page zoom level. To change the zoom level, click on the browser-resize button in the address bar. The zoom level you select will apply to all pages on that domain. An example of a domain is facebook.com or instagram.com.
• Provided users with an option to opt-out of browser telemetry and updated the Privacy Policy FAQ to include browser data collection and usage practices.

Oculus Browser 6.1

• Launching Oculus Browser is now faster
• New About Oculus Browser dialog in Settings for version numbers, privacy policy, and terms of service information
• Improvements to site compatibility

Oculus Browser 6.0

• Oculus Browser now uses zero-copy timewarp layers to reduce buffer copies and improve performance across all scenarios, including media playback.
• Update to Chromium version 74 with nearly 200 new/improved developer APIs, note some APIs are not applicable to VR but highlights include:
  • Animation Worklet (experimental) - high-performance scripted animations that run off main rendering thread.
  • OffscreenCanvas - canvas rendering context (2D+WebGL 3D) to be used in worker threads for higher performance graphics.
  • Opus in MP4 with MSE - allows Opus audio codec inside the mp4 container in streaming scenarios.
  • Codec/container switching within MSE - sites can now transition between codecs/containers during streamed playback.
  • Web Audio Autoplay Policy - Web Audio now follows the same policies as other scenarios when it comes to whether pages can autoplay sound.
  • User Activation Query API - let’s pages query if the current task was triggered by user interaction, helpful in scenarios like initiating WebVR where user interaction is required.
  • Unified Plan SDP - new format for the data exchange used in setting up WebRTC connections/calls
  • Deprecation of TLS 1.0 and 1.1 for security (to be removed in 2020)

Oculus Browser 5.9

• Overhauled the look and feel of Oculus Browser to a design that is more comfortable and intuitive.
• Added easy-to-understand drop-down menus for selecting 180, 360, and 3D video formats when a user is watching fullscreen video.

Oculus Browser 5.8

• Revamped the New Tab Page with a new experience that contains shortcuts to popular sites, curated VR experiences from the web, and VR media from you, your friends, and groups on Facebook.
• Provided a feature to enable users to save immersive content (360 Videos, 360 Photos, 3D Photos, 360 Experiences) from the Facebook app on Android and view them later from an Oculus headset in Home, or through the Saved section in Library. When you open up saved content on your headset, the content will launch automatically from Oculus Browser.
• Improved the overall media experience. You will now notice a significantly improved playback experience with better battery life.

Oculus Browser 5.7

• Fixed bugs and improved reliability.

Oculus Browser 5.4

• WebXR is now available under an experimental feature flag.
• Developers can now use WebGL multiview by default. Multiview (prefixed by ovr) can dramatically improve performance in CPU bound experiences.
• Added a Permissions Dialog feature so you can manage permissions across the different sites that you visit. You can access this feature by clicking the lock icon on the address for any site that requests permissions.
• Fixed bugs and improved reliability.

Oculus Browser 5.2

• Fixed scrolling on download list.
• Fixed issue where the layout of media controls was not aligned with the screen size.
• Fixed issue where there would be persistent dimming on the screen.
• Improved the Desktop mode button tooltip text to more clearly identify what mode you’re in.
• Fixed notification bar input issues.
• Tooltip for switching to Desktop Mode has now been localized for additional languages.
• Fixed stale WebVR rendering when quick vr-to-vr navigation is happening.
• Fixed “WebGL hits a snag” issue caused by incorrect shutdown of WebVR SurfaceTexture during vr-to-vr navigation.

Oculus Browser 5.0

• CSS manipulation is easier with the new CSS Typed Model Object.
• New rendering context for canvas elements.
• TextArea and Select now support the autocomplete attribute.
• You can set autocapitalize on a form element to apply the attribute to any child form fields, which improves compatibility with Safari’s implementation of autocapitalize.
• trimStart() and trimEnd() provided as the standards-based way of trimming whitespace from strings.
• The CSS Paint API enables you to programmatically generate an image.
• The Server Timing API enables web servers to provide performance timing information via HTTP headers.
• New CSS display: contents property makes boxes disappear.
• The syntax for specifying HSL/HSLA and RGB/RGBAcoordinates for the color property now match the CSS Color 4 spec.
• New feature policy that enables you to control synchronous XHRs through an HTTP header or the iframe allow attribute.
• Support for ResizeObservers, which notifies you when an element’s content rectangle has changed its size.
• Modules can now access host-specific metadata with import.meta.
• Oculus Browser now supports named captures and Unicode property escapes in regular expressions.
• The default preload value for <audio > and <video > elements is now metadata. This brings Chrome in line with other browsers and helps to reduce bandwidth and resource usage by only loading the metadata and not the media itself.
• You can now use Request.prototype.cache to view the cache mode of a Request and determine whether a request is a reload request.
• The addition of the preventScroll attribute enables you to now focus an element without scrolling to it when you use the focus management API.
• Oculus Browser allows you to import JavaScript modules dynamically.
• Async iterators and generators have been added.
• You can override the browser’s default overflow scroll behavior with the CSS overscroll-behavior property.
• finally is now available on Promise instances and is invoked after a Promise has been fulfilled or rejected.
• The Intl.PluralRules API enables you to build applications that understand pluralization of a given language by indicating which plural form applies for a given number, and language. And can help with ordinal numbers.
• Support for OpenType variable fonts has been added.
• You can capture media streams from HTML Media elements.

• Chrome 62
• Chrome 63
• Chrome 64
• Chrome 65
• Chrome 66