Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- The Play Store is making further preparations to identify apps designed for Android XR.
- Apps will be able to display a “Made for XR” label with corresponding headset icon.
- While few apps have declared this support already, Microsoft Edge is off to an early start.
Android is coming for your head. With last week’s announcement of Android XR, the door is now opening for a new generation of augmented, mixed, and virtual reality apps that will take full advantage of hardware like Samsung’s upcoming “Moohan” headset. While it’s sounding like Google is making it as easy as possible for developers to bring existing apps to XR, how will you know what software is really optimized for this new platform? We’ve spotted some changes Google is working on for the Play Store that may shine a little light on just that.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
Back at the end of October we uncovered some early evidence of the Play Store’s preparations for XR apps. That included a text string warning about hardware compatibility, as well as an icon that looked like it would be used to designate XR headsets.
With our first hands-on look at the Android XR interface, we got to actually see how app discovery in Play would work, and that included highlighting apps with specific extended reality support, beyond just those that are merely compatible.
Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
To that we can now add a little more detail. We’re looking at version 44.0.28-31 of the Google Play Store, and when we manage to convince it to start showing us the XR stuff, we begin seeing some new messages. Apps can display a “Made for XR” label accompanied by that very same icon we uncovered in October. We’re also able to get some additional apps to show up in that extended reality category, with Microsoft’s Edge browser appearing to declare the required support. And it looks like that “Made for XR” badge will appear in search, as well, for apps you don’t have already installed.
Of course, we can expect a whole lot more apps to start broadcasting their support for Android XR in the weeks and months to come as we wait for the first XR hardware to arrive. Are there any existing Android apps that you think would be particularly well suited for picking up some XR enhancements? Let us know down in the comments.
