XR Developer News - August 2026

Strictly speaking we're not in August anymore, but as we're still in the slow summer season, this month is another short edition. Pretty soon we'll be blasting into hardware season, with Meta Connect up in a few weeks, so the quiet times will soon be over.

Meta

• Meta is working on Horizon OS 2.7, which includes the option to work with higher refresh rates. It also published an overview of the improvements that have been released throughout the year.

Horizon OS 2.7 Brings Gamepad Emulation & 240 Hz Refresh Rate To Quest 3

Meta’s Horizon OS 2.7 is rolling out, bringing Gamepad Emulation to Quest Touch Plus controllers and extended refresh rates up to 240Hz on Quest 3.

UploadVRLuna

• It also released Meta XR Operator, a testing solution for XR apps which allows MCP connections into apps running in for instance the XR simulator, allowing for improved automated testing. There are still quite a few limitations (e.g. no hand interactions), but it's interesting tooling.

Introducing Meta XR Operator: Close the Build-Test-Verify Loop for VR

Meta XR Operator lets any MCP-compatible AI agent see, navigate, and interact with your running VR app in Meta XR Simulator, closing the build-test-verify loop.

Meta Horizon OS Developers

• On the glasses side, the Meta Wearables Device Access Toolkit was updated to v0.9, the web apps support on Meta Ray-Ban Display got an update and so did the OS running on those.

Snap

• Snap will be announcing more information about SPECS on September 16th. It seems like the device will not launch yet then, but I'd guess we'll get full details, hands-on impressions and actual launch date.

See for Yourself: Watch the SPECS Launch on September 16

We’re excited to host the launch of SPECS, our new augmented reality glasses that make computing more human, on Wednesday, September 16th in Los Angeles, California.

• Lens Studio v5.23 was released and Snap posted a deep dive on CLAD, which was introduced in 5.22.

Building SPECS Experiences Faster

• I'm happy to share we got 1st place in the Lens Update category of the monthly Spectacles Community Challenge!

Spectacles Community Challenge #15: Winners Announcement

See the winning Lenses of Spectacles Community Challenge #15. Learn more about the Developers behind them and their projects.

Lenslist Bloglensblogadmin

Other XR hardware, software and news

• Khronos Group gave a presentation at SIGGRAPH about the state and evolution of OpenXR.

• Google's Android XR Jetpack libraries reached beta state.

Jetpack XR SDK core libraries reach beta: The next milestone for Android XR

News and insights on the Android platform, developer tools, and events.

Android Developers Blog

• Godot's support for visionOS is steadily growing.

Upcoming XR events

• September 16th, 2026 - Snap SPECS announcement.
• September 23-24, 2026 - Meta Connect, Menlo Park, California.
• December 7-9, 2026 - UnitedXR Europe in Brussels, Belgium.
• April 7-9, 2027 - Laval Virtual in Laval, France.

A bit about this newsletter

Each month I try to round up all the interesting developments in the XR developer landscape. New hardware and software releases, events, tooling, etc. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, for instance if I missed anything which definitely should be in this monthly round up next time. Want to know more? Check out the about page.

And if you need expertise in the XR space, know that we offer exactly that at DNA.inc where I'm Head of XR, so don't hesitate to get in touch!