Andrew Heinzman
One of the most frustrating things about the Oculus Quest is that it needs to be tethered to a Facebook account. Not only does this allow Facebook to collect your personal data, but it means that your Oculus headset won’t work if Facebook has another massive outage. But a 17-year-old coder has found a solution.
Basti564, a young YouTuber known for VR hacks and guides, just published Oculess. This sideloadable tool breaks the connection between your Oculus account and Facebook in a few simple steps. You just need to enable Developer Mode on your Oculus Quest 2 to sideload the Oculess app.
There are a few drawbacks to this process, though. Saying goodbye to Facebook means that key Oculus features, such as the Oculus Store, Casting, Oculus TV, and the built-in Oculus browser will stop working. Also, some apps downloaded from the Quest Store won’t launch.
That means you’ll be sideloading all your apps from here on out. But it’s not the end of the world, there are plenty of replacements for what Facebook offers. You can replace the Oculus browser with Firefox Reality, for example, and the Quest App Launcher lets you use any software that “requires” the official Oculus Store.
And hey, there are a ton of great games that you should sideload to your Oculus Quest. There’s even a Pokemon VR game that lets you experience trainer battles in person!
You can find the Oculess installation guide on Basti564’s GitHub. For instructions on sideloading Oculus apps, check our full guide over at How-To Geek.
