Meta’s Quest App Library Took a Step Back With Filtering and Sorting

There’s an old principle associated with medicine that applies surprisingly well to software design: first, do no harm.

I’m not opposed to changing a user interface. Software evolves. New features get added, old ideas get reconsidered, and sometimes familiar ways of doing things need to change.

Meta’s new Navigator has brought some genuinely useful improvements to app organization on Quest. We finally have folders, something users have been asking for for years. Apps can also be manually arranged, so I can drag the ones I use most wherever I want them. Selecting “Clear Sort” returns the library to that custom arrangement.

Those are good changes.

But in redesigning the App Library, Meta also took a sorting and filtering system that worked extremely well and replaced it with one that makes finding and organizing apps more difficult.

For someone with a relatively new Quest account and a few dozen apps, this may not be much of an issue. For those of us who have been using Quest for years, our libraries can contain hundreds or even more than a thousand apps. Mine does.

And that’s where the problem becomes obvious.

The Old App Library Got This Right

The previous Quest App Library separated two different functions: filtering and sorting.

Filtering determined what I wanted to see. I could choose All, Installed, Not Installed, Updates, Demos, Hidden and other categories.

Sorting determined how I wanted to see those apps. I could choose Recent, A-Z or Z-A.

More importantly, those controls worked together.

If I wanted to see only the apps currently installed on my headset, sorted alphabetically, I could choose Installed and A-Z.

If I wanted to see my installed apps based on which ones I had used recently, I could choose Installed and Recent.

If I wanted to browse apps I owned but didn’t currently have installed, I could choose Not Installed and then sort that list alphabetically.

It was simple, granular and flexible.

The App Library essentially asked me two questions:

What do you want to see?

Then:

How do you want to see it?

I never really thought much about any of this because it just worked. That’s usually a pretty good sign that an interface is doing its job.

That distinction is largely gone in Navigator.

When a Filter Becomes a Sort

Open the Sort menu in Navigator and you’ll find Recently Used, A-Z, Z-A and Installed listed together.

That’s the fundamental problem.

“Installed” isn’t really a way of sorting a list. It determines which apps should be in the list in the first place.

By putting Installed alongside A-Z and Recently Used, Meta has made those choices mutually exclusive.

Select Installed and I can see what’s currently on my headset, but I can’t then alphabetize those results.

Select A-Z and I get an alphabetical library, but installed and uninstalled apps are mixed together.

Select Recently Used and I have the same problem.

The old App Library allowed me to combine these choices. Navigator makes me choose between them.

A Thousand-App Library Makes the Problem Obvious

This isn't an abstract complaint for me.

When I captured screenshots of the previous App Library, my Quest account contained 1,005 apps. Of those, 235 were installed on my headset.

Under the old system, I could filter the library down to those 235 installed apps and then sort them alphabetically.

With Navigator, choosing A-Z means I'm no longer looking only at those 235 apps. Hundreds of uninstalled titles become part of the view again.

Sometimes I want to browse what's installed. Other times I'm looking through apps I own but haven't installed. I may want either list alphabetically, or I may want to see what I've used recently.

The old App Library gave me that flexibility.

Navigator doesn't.

Folders Don’t Replace Filters

The irony is that Navigator has improved library organization in other ways.

Folders are probably the biggest example. Quest users have wanted them for years, and I'm glad they're finally here. Manual arrangement is useful too. I can decide which apps deserve prominent placement rather than letting Meta make that decision for me.

But neither replaces filtering.

Folders require me to organize apps ahead of time. Filtering is dynamic. It lets me change what I’m looking at depending on what I’m trying to accomplish right now.

I shouldn't need to manually organize a library containing hundreds of apps to recreate functionality Quest already had.

There’s room for both.

First, Do No Harm

Quest is now a mature platform with long-time users whose libraries have grown alongside it. Simplifying the experience for new users is a reasonable goal, but good library management becomes more important as those collections grow.

That’s why I keep coming back to the same principle: first, do no harm.

Just restore the distinction between filtering and sorting.

Let me choose whether I want to see all my apps, installed apps or uninstalled apps.

Then let me decide whether I want those results arranged alphabetically, by recent use or in my own custom order.

Navigator has already moved Quest app organization forward in some important ways.

There’s no reason we should have to move backward somewhere else to get there.

Important note: Meta appears to have multiple versions of Navigator in circulation. My Quest currently combines Installed with the sorting options, while other users with the same Navigator layout still have separate filtering and sorting controls. The interface I'm criticizing here may not be the version Meta ultimately settles on.