Stuck indoors? Well, you should know that your VR headset is way more than just a Beat Saber machine. You can actually chat, play, and watch movies with your friends, almost as if the world wasn’t thrust into a global pandemic—or whatever is keeping you from going outside.

Here’s a few choice apps where you can connect with friends, or meet new friends too. Either way, it sure beats FaceTime. Oh, and all of them are free too!

VRChat

The OG of social VR apps is still going strong, even nearly six years after its initial release on Oculus Rift DK1 in 2014. Over time, it’s created a unique culture of weird, organic memes thanks to its open avatar and world creation abilities. You can also connect with non-VR headset owning buddies here, making for an awesome meeting point for basically everyone… except PSVR owners – at least for now.

Steam – Viveport – Rift – Quest

Bigscreen

There’s a lobby now where you can hang out and chat, but really the bulk of Bigscreen’s draw is being able to sit down with friends or strangers and bond over its unlimited viewing capabilities. Anything you can access on your computer and display to your monitor can be shared with anyone, making Bigscreen the gold standard of social viewing platforms. You can also pay to watch movies now too, which is a nice touch if you aren’t already signed up to a streaming service like Netflix or Prime Video.

Steam – Rift – Quest – Go

Rec Room

Chilling and chatting is cool, and you can totally do just that in Rec Room, but this cross-platform beauty unites all of the VR headset-owning community in one vibrant, fun place. There are co-op ‘quests’ to go on, a battle royale shooter, and plenty of reasons to stick around and have fun outside of shooting the breeze with your mates.

Steam – Rift – Quest – PSVR

NeosVR

NeosVR is like the offspring of an operating system, a game engine, and a chat room; it wants to be the metaverse. That said, it’s pretty technical, but the things you can build there in-game are fantastic. It even has its own cryptocurrency, although the userbase isn’t near large enough to make it functional just yet.

Steam

OrbusVR

Ok, I said all of these social apps are free, and that’s still technically true with OrbusVR. arguably VR’s most full-featured MMORPG. You can play for free up until level 10, and mix with the entire playerbase in the process. Play as a bard, mage, paladin, shaman, scoundrel and more as you explore the wide open world of Patraeyl.

Steam – Rift – Quest

Mozilla Hubs

Mozilla Hubs is a lightweight social program that isn’t actually an app at all, rather a WebXR-based social experience which makes for effortless, one-click creation of virtual rooms which anyone can join—from smartphones desktop browsers to VR headsets—directly from the browser. Just put in your room code for your private chat room and join your friends on any device.

PC VR, Quest, Go

Oculus Home

Unfortunately for now it’s only for Rift users, although with completely customizable spaces there’s good enough reason to meet your friends in an Oculus Home space before launching off to other multiplayer games. That is until Facebook Horizons makes its way to the platform, which ought to unite all Oculus users under a single app.

No need to download anything. It’s already baked into the desktop runtime.

SteamVR Home

Like Oculus Home, SteamVR Home isn’t really a traditional chat room, although it has some of the best custom-made spaces out of all social spaces. Where else can you hang out with friends in a preview section of Half-Life: Alyx?

It’s baked into SteamVR, although you may want to visit the Steam Workshop to browse the available user-built spaces.

vTime

vTime is a bit of a sleeper on this list, as it doesn’t offer screen sharing or madcap user-generated content, but if you’re at all intimidated by any of that and are just looking for a chill place to chat with minimal setup, vTime is a great place to do it. Working somewhat like a social network, you make friends and send chat invites to people, and are then seated for round-table style chat in a variety of slick locations.

Windows MR – Rift – Go – Android – iOS

Altspace VR

AltspaceVR includes live shows, meetups, classes, and is accessible on a number of VR headsets. Although it’s not the most lively platform as it once was in the early days of VR, you the basic functionality is all there, and the community engagement is still impressively high. Check out all the upcoming events here.

Steam – Rift – Quest – Go

What are your favorite social VR apps? Let us know in the comments below!

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • MosBen

    A friend literally just asked me whether there was a way to hang out with people in VR. Excellent timing on a very useful article!

  • Tonanamous

    #11 SomniumSpace on Steam is starting to look interesting.

  • You can use some of these apps for tours. VTime is a great place to upload 360 and stereoscopic images. We use it to tour Japan with people once a month. We also tour people in a more interactive Japanese samurai Recroom world. https://www.discovertajimi.com/vr-index.html

  • Renji Bijoy

    Immersed VR is super effective for if you want to be productive in VR solo and/or with your remote team as well!

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  • You ever wanted to have a bored, angry 7 year old run up and scream profanity at you, because his parents grounded him? VRChat is *YOUR* game!

    How about a horny lady-boys that molest your avie while clearly masturbating? VRChat has you covered!

    And don’t we all want a ticked off Russian hacker, with a brewing hatred of Americans, spam your eyeballs with nauseating effects and hardcore porn via his custom build virus shader? VRChat is the only game in town!

    VRChat, for those times when you TRULY want to hate humanity.

  • namekuseijin

    don’t overlook the creation tools in Rec Room: most of the popular rooms are entirely user creations, from the maps to the objects within, lighting and the logic governing it all

    and it’s all created from within VR itself. There’s hardly anything as amazing as scaling a block in your own hands or quickly moving a huge and weightless tree to another spot

  • DanDei

    Great, now all I need to do is convince my friends to finally buy VR systems instead of spending their money on stupid toys and books for their kids.

  • Hoppin’ is one of the best I’ve seen yet for the Oculus Go. You are pretty much teleporting into places and can hang out with up to four people. Strongly recommend!

  • disqus_eEt4mwEjx8

    Sansar is missing in this list.

  • disqus_eEt4mwEjx8

    I love NeosVR (best world building capabilities), VRChat (great community) and BigScreen (awesome for screen sharing). <3

  • MitckK7

    I have a 14 year old daughter that has for the last 2 months been using an Occulus 2 with basically unfettered access. After a couple of recent incidents, I have started to monitor what I believed was a game platform. I was APPALLED at what I discovered is available with regard to an online experience.(Chat). Is there any option that is safer for the younger crowd?? At present, I am of the opinion that I have no option but to take this device away, until my daughter get older.