Develop
Passthrough Best Practices
Updated: Dec 9, 2025
This topic describes several best practices that are useful when integrating the Passthrough API.
Enable and disable passthrough
The API supports enabling and disabling the passthrough capability through
OVRPassthroughLayer.enabled or through OVRManager.isInsightPassthroughEnabled at runtime. This is a good way to save resources when passthrough is not needed for an extended period and can be enabled at a moment when a short creation delay can be tolerated, such as when changing scenes.Use system recommendation to choose between MR and VR
If your app supports both MR and pure VR, query the system to decide
which one to default to. See
Enable Based on System Recommendation
for details.
Keep passthrough cameras in sync with the display
To maximize the smoothness of passthrough, it is recommended to use a 72Hz refresh rate for your application. In flicker-free lighting conditions, passthrough will synchronize the cameras with the display, ensuring stable latency and eliminating judder. The feature is only available on Quest3/Quest3S devices.
Learn more
Design guidelines
User considerations
- Designing safety and user empowerment in social immersive apps: Empower users, to confidently manage their participation in social virtual spaces.
- Designing for privacy: Help users feel safe and build trust with privacy design.
- Localization: Learn about localization and translation.
- Accessibility: Learn about accessibility and how to make your app accessible.
- Comfort: Learn about how to make your app comfortable for your users.
Health and Safety
- Health and safety guidelines overview: Overview of health and safety recommendations for your app.
- General information for immersive experiences: Learn about the general health and safety guidelines.
- Depth user safety: Learn about the health and safety guidelines for depth.
- Passthrough user safety: Learn about the health and safety guidelines for passthrough.
- Scene user safety: Learn about the health and safety guidelines for scene.
- Shared spatial anchors safety: Learn about the health and safety guidelines for SSA.
- Boundaryless and contextual-boundaryless safety best practices: Learn about the best practices for boundaryless experiences.
Did you find this page helpful?
Virtual reality / Meta Horizon
Support and legal
Virtual reality / Meta Horizon
Support and legal
Virtual reality / Meta Horizon
Support and legal
English (US)
© 2026 Meta