Setting Up Meta Quest and OpenXR Devices

Immersive mode is a headset feature, so it lives in the two editions that run on one: the noLegal edition, the general-purpose sideload build that happens to work on a headset too, and the VR edition, built specifically for one. Every other edition - Standard, Lite, Photos, Legacy, FOSS - never shows a VR button anywhere, because the capability is not compiled in. See the full grid in the edition comparison if you are choosing between them.

On the headset itself, FastMediaSorter checks what it is running on before it shows anything immersive: a real Meta Quest, a non-Quest Android XR headset, or a device with no XR support at all. Nothing here is a manual setting - plug in a supported headset and the VR controls simply appear; leave the app on an ordinary phone and they simply do not.

The VR edition installs the way any headset app does - from wherever your headset gets its apps. The noLegal edition is a sideload build, so on the headset it goes on the same way it would on a phone: copy the APK across and open it from the headset's own file manager, or use a sideloading tool if you already have one set up.

Either way, the very first thing worth doing after install is the welcome wizard: pick the VR headset device profile and FastMediaSorter pre-enables 3D/360° layouts and immersive controls for you, so you are not hunting through Settings before your first film.

Immersive mode has one master switch: Settings, the Media tab, section 3D-VR playback and controls. Turn it on and every VR entry point in the app - badges, menu items, the immersive browser - lights up; turn it off and they all disappear together, because the same switch also flips the app's global 3D kill-switch behind the scenes, so the two settings can never disagree.

On a device with no XR support, the switch is disabled and the section shows an advisory instead: Available on devices such as Meta Quest 3 and Android XR. Pick the VR headset device profile in the welcome wizard and this switch is turned on for you automatically - no need to find it by hand.

Under that switch sits OpenXR, the open standard most VR and mixed-reality headsets speak - it is what lets FastMediaSorter talk to a Meta Quest and to other Android XR headsets through the same code instead of one app build per brand. When you step into an immersive session, FastMediaSorter hands off to a dedicated screen of its own with a steady frame loop built for a headset display, so the picture stays smooth while everything else - your file list, your settings - waits for you on the other side, unchanged, for when you step back out.

Editions: noLegal.

FastMediaSorter calls its immersive playback session VR Cinema, and it is never more than one tap away from a video, wherever you found it:

• From a video tile in the file browser, the tile's overflow menu offers Open in VR Cinema.
• From a video resource on the main screen, the same entry sits in that resource's own menu.
• From inside the flat video player, it is a badge and an overflow entry - covered in spatial 3D/360 cinema and video playback.

If the headset is busy or not reachable at the moment, FastMediaSorter says so plainly - VR Cinema is unavailable right now - rather than leaving you staring at nothing.

Editions: noLegal.

Browsing a folder full of APK files on the headset? A small badge - a circular VR headset icon - appears in the corner of any APK tile that declares itself VR-capable, so you can tell a Quest app from an ordinary one before you tap it. FastMediaSorter reads this straight out of the APK's own manifest, so the badge is only there for files it can check locally; one sitting on a slow network folder shows no badge rather than making you wait.

Instead of dropping you back to a flat screen every time you want the next file, FastMediaSorter can show your folder as an immersive browser - a 3D grid of tiles rendered right inside the immersive scene. Point the controller ray at a tile to highlight it and pull the trigger to open it; the thumbstick walks the highlight across the grid too, left and right along a row, up and down between rows, stepping to the next page when you walk off the side. Choosing a video starts it playing immediately, in stereo when the file has it, without a detour back through the flat file browser first.

The first time you go immersive after installing, FastMediaSorter shows a legend of every controller binding: touch controllers (Quest 2, 3 and Pro), hand tracking with controllers set aside, a Bluetooth keyboard and a Bluetooth mouse, each in its own section. Any press closes it - you are not stuck reading it - and a HELP button on the HUD strip brings it straight back whenever you want a refresher, or long-press the Y button (or F1 on a keyboard) to reopen it yourself.

However you got in, one input reliably takes you back out: the B button on a touch controller, a key press on a Bluetooth keyboard, or the matching hand-tracking gesture - FastMediaSorter treats them all as the same "please exit" signal. There is a short grace period right after the first frame appears, so a stray button press while the picture is still loading will not throw you straight back out again.

Editions: noLegal.

The same 3D-VR playback and controls section in Settings has a Test Immersive button: it opens a sample 360° image in immersive mode on the spot, so you can confirm the headset and the app are talking to each other without hunting down a real 360° file first. If the session cannot start, FastMediaSorter says so directly - Cannot start VR. Check that your headset is connected. - and if it drops mid-session, VR session ended unexpectedly.

The self-test's decoder is built to survive a low-memory device rather than crash it, and if your own device has no sample media handy, FastMediaSorter ships one anyway: a royalty-free 360° image bundled with the app, used as the fallback whenever the diagnostic needs something to show.