Last year Meta added the ability to send simple invite links to your friends which would bring you together into the same place in VR. It’s a great way to easily join up with friends in VR, but it seems very few people know the feature exists.

Back in August of 2021, Meta extended its Oculus platform capabilities to allows users to create invite links from their smartphone and then send the link to their friends—by text, email, DM, etc—that when clicked would automatically launch the correct app and send all users into the same space to play together.

And it works great. I’ve been using the feature heavily with Beat Saber to join up with friends for multiplayer sessions. It’s as easy as saying “Hey meet me in Beat Saber in 20 minutes, here’s the link.”

And though the feature requires per-app implementation from developers, many of Quest’s most popular social games are already supported, like Walkabout Mini Golf, VRChat, Rec Room, Demeo, Horizon Worlds, and more. Invite links work with Rift apps too as long as both you and your friends are using the Oculus PC version of the app (or the game supports cross-platform play between Quest and Oculus PC).

But from my experience with VR users both personally and professionally, very few seem to know that ‘invite links’ exists at all. And it’s hard to blame them… the feature is fairly hidden and Meta doesn’t do a good job of telling users what invite links do or how to use them. So here I’m going to explain how they work, and why it’s problematic that more people don’t know about them.

How to Use Invite Links on Quest

If you want to create a Quest invite link to join friends in VR, start by launching your Oculus smartphone app.

  1. In the Oculus smartphone app click the ‘Menu’ button (three lines icon)
  2. Select ‘Invite Links’
  3. Select a supported app (ie: Walkabout Mini Golf)
  4. Select the destination that you want to go within the app (ie: the specific course within Walkabout Mini Golf that you want to play)
  5. Select ‘Create Link’
  6. Use the ‘Share’ button to share the link through whatever channel you’d like
  7. Use the ‘Launch’ button to launch the app you chose on your headset and join your friends

Invite links are the perfect way to pre-plan a VR session with your friends and easily meet in the same place without fiddling with any menus or friends lists. Once you’re ready to play, press the ‘Launch’ button from the invite link and your headset will load the selected game and should automatically send you to the same location as your friends. Invite links on Quest are valid for 24 hours from their creation.

Why Don’t More People Know About Invite Links and Why Does it Matter?

Well, I think Meta is primarily to blame here. The Oculus smartphone app interface is far from perfect, and it confusingly separates the invite link functionality from your friends list.

Most users who intend to invite a friend to join them would naturally navigate to their friends list to find the friend they want to send an invite to. However, if you go to your friends list in the Oculus smartphone app (not so intuitively hidden in the ‘Menu’ section and called ‘People’), you actually can’t invite friends to a game that way.

Invite links (also hidden in the ‘Menu’ section) are a totally separate construct, and, as far as I’ve seen, they’re never tutorialized. So unless you know what an ‘invite link’ is at first glance, you might have just glossed over that button. If you want to invite friends from your Oculus friends list then you’d need to create an invite link first, then go back to your friends list and send the link as an Oculus DM. It works but it could be a much smoother and more unified process.

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So why does it matter that more people don’t know about invite links? Well, beyond the obvious (it’s a hassle-free way to get together with friends in VR that everyone can benefit from), if few people know they exist then few people are using them. And if few people are using them, then VR developers won’t be particularly encouraged to spend time adding the feature to their games. After all, if hardly anyone is using invite links, why bother?

An ecosystem where all Quest apps support invite links (and by extension Destinations, Deep Linking, and Rich Presence features), would make it far more fluid to connect with friends in VR and even move from one app to another together.

– – — – –

I hope you’ll give invite links a try, and if you find them convenient, spread the word! Over time hopefully we’ll see more and more Quest apps support the feature making it easier for everyone to play in VR together.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."

  • I know about this feature but never used it. Thanks for sharing the word about it!

  • I don’t want to invite my “friends” into VR. I generally don’t want to invite anyone or play with anyone else. I play VR to get away from all you plonkers.

    • kool

      I think most people like to connect with others. But I do agree quest should already have a friend list wtf?

    • benz145

      I mean, if I want to hang out with my friends, I start by contacting them with my smartphone. This works the same way for when you want to hang out in VR. Much more convenient for everyone to pre-plan before putting on the headset.

      Your way of doing it is like showing up to a bar and *then* telling your friends to come by once you’re already there. What if they’re busy?

      • Well, I don’t plan gaming sessions, but that’s just me. I put on my console, PC, VR headset when I feel like playing and I play. If I want someone to join when I’m there, which I never do, then I’ll “ping” them there and then. But if you want to arrange to meet in advance, which is fine, then that ultimately has nothing to do with the VR headset, or al least it shouldn’t imo. The part in the headset should be as simple as finding your friend on your friend’s list inside the headset and inviting them to join directly from there. Job done. But, just like in the olden days, if I wanted my friends to come around and play some games then, sure, I’d give them a call or whatever beforehand and arrange a time and a place. Meta doesn’t need to be involved in that part of it at all, just like Nintendo wasn’t involved in that part when I wanted my mates to come round and play some NES, SNES, N64, whatever–and it shouldn’t imo.

  • I think the bigger issue is that it has to be done outside of VR. Which most players aren’t going to use if they’re already inside of VR. There is a way to do it in VR but it’s about 10 times as convoluted as on phone.

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    • benz145

      Yeah definitely not supposed to be part of the in-headset invite system.

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    I always assumed this button was for their referral program.

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