Netflix has discontinued its streaming app for Quest headsets, Upload VR reports. The good news for Quest owners is that Meta recently added support for Netflix in the Quest browser, complete with 1080p streaming.
Netflix hadn’t significantly updated its VR app since porting it to the Quest in 2019. It never gained passthrough or download support, and its resolution stayed pinned at 480p. None of that mattered when the app came out for Samsung Gear VR in 2015, but things have changed a lot in the nine years since then.
I’d imagine some people will miss the cozy Netflix cabin in this YouTube Short, though.
Streaming in the browser fixes two of those things — passthrough and higher-resolution streaming — but users still can’t download Netflix’s content to watch offline the way they can in, say, the iOS app. Still, watching in a browser means being able to use other virtual environments while streaming video.
That’s similar to what has happened on the Vision Pro, which Netflix also has no app for. Owners of Apple’s headset can still watch Netflix in a browser, which is fine but not as nice as a dedicated app experience can be. Thankfully, third-party developers have stepped in there to fill the void, releasing apps like Supercut, which streams Netflix in a web view and has a “cinema” environment very similar to the one Apple made for the visionOS Apple TV app.
