What vrOS is
vrOS puts your desktop windows on floating panels inside your headset. Capture a single window or a whole display, place it where you want it — anchored to the world, to your head, or to either hand — and read your screen without taking the headset off. Your controller clicks and your typing go to the panel you are pointing at, so the window stays a window instead of a picture of one.
It is a desktop application first. vrOS runs in a plain window on your desktop whether or not a headset is connected, and VR attaches as a presentation layer when a runtime is there. Starting vrOS never starts SteamVR, and closing SteamVR never closes vrOS. Everything that touches the VR runtime, the GPU, or a capture API runs in a separate supervised process, so a driver fault or a runtime crash does not take the app with it — the panels come back, in place, when the runtime does.
Everything happens on the machine in front of you: no telemetry, no remote control, and nothing vrOS sees leaves your computer. The only network traffic comes from extensions you turn on, such as Twitch or OBS Control.
Start here
Section titled “Start here”- Install — get it from Steam, and what each platform needs. Windows 10 (1903 or later) and 11 are supported; Linux and Steam Frame native are in development.
- First run — the driver setup card, where the Dash appears, and how vrOS registers itself with SteamVR so you can rebind it.
- The Dash — the main panel. Overlays, performance, playspace, and settings, reachable without leaving the game you are in.
The rest of the guide
Section titled “The rest of the guide”| Page | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Overlays | Capturing windows and displays, anchors, opacity, curve, capture caps, and saved layouts |
| Performance | Frame timing next to what your PC was doing when it hitched |
| Playspace | Drag and rotate your play space, fix the floor, recenter, reset |
| Settings | General, audio routing, themes, accessibility, language, keyboard, controls, extensions |
| Input | How vrOS hands input back to your desktop the moment you touch your mouse |
| The VR keyboard | Six built-in boards across three languages, Korean and Japanese composition |
| Desktop app | The same surfaces in a window, at desktop density |
| Extensions | What an extension is, and what it has to ask you for |
Five extensions ship with vrOS 2.0.0, each off until you turn it on:
VRChat OSC, OBS Control, the
Soundboard, Twitch, and Steam Link Face. vrOS 2.0.0
does not have feature parity with vrOS 1 — the release notes
list what is not in it yet, and vrOS 1 stays available on the legacy branch
(see Install).
When something is wrong
Section titled “When something is wrong”Troubleshooting covers the common failures: no panels, a Dash you cannot find, capture that comes up black, input going to the wrong place. The FAQ answers the shorter questions. If neither helps, support.vros.cat takes a report, and the Discord is where people are.