The Daydream compatibility update has rolled out to users of Samsung's Galaxy S8 giving them far more options for VR than any other phone can deliver right now. The ability to play both Gear VR and Daydream games on one device is huge and delivers access to dozens of new apps and games. However, some folks have run into an issue where their phone asks for Gear VR when you launch a Daydream app.
There are a few ways to deal with this problem if it crops up for you, and we have all the details for you here!
What is happening?
The Daydream update is fairly new, only just arriving in August of 2017. It added compatibility for Daydream to the Galaxy S8, letting you see and download Daydream apps. While there are plenty of games and apps that are exclusive to one headset or another, there are also more than a few that will work on either headset. Essentially what is happening when you launch an app and it asks for Gear VR instead of Daydream is that your phone has confused itself.
There are bound to be a few issues considering how new this update is, and that's what we're looking at. This issue specifically crops up with cross-platform apps and games, because your phone has been hardcoded to launch Gear VR. There are a few ways around this, but hopefully, down the line, we'll see an update from Samsung themselves that solves this pesky issue.
Open your games from VR
One option to deal with this issue is to already have your VR headset on and to launch the game or app you're interested in from there. This doesn't work every time, but in some cases already having your headset up and running seems to cut down on the confusion when your phone opens an app for you.
Uninstall one service
There isn't a hard and fast way to deal with this particular problem, but you can sneak around it. If you don't intend on using your Gear VR for a while thanks to the new Daydream library of games and apps, then you can always just uninstall Gear VR services. Obviously, this isn't ideal because it will involve removing Oculus services from your phone, and everything will need to be reinstalled before you're able to use Gear VR again.
It does solve the problem of your phone asking for the wrong VR headset though. Since some users have reported this problem cropping up even when they launch an app from within the Daydream app.
Questions?
Have you had issues with your phone asking for the wrong headset when you're ready to jump into VR? Is there another fix you know of that we didn't mention here? Be sure to drop us a line about it in the comments below!
