5 Most Useful Apple Vision Pro Apps

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Despite a lot of the noise surrounding the release of Apple Vision Pro and its lack of cornerstone apps like Netflix, Apple’s VR headset has still launched with over 600 apps.

Now, that isn’t to say all 600 of those are useful, or even worth any of your time, but there are some Vision Pro apps that you should download as soon as you have it out of the box.

We’ve picked our five favourites that will actually help you accomplish things, whether that’s work or personal aims, whilst taking full advantage of Vision OS.

1. Fantastical

We all love a bit of organisation. So what about organisation that is right in front of your face so you don’t miss a single engagement or reminder?

Actually, that doesn’t sound very fun. But Fantastical has been an excellent calendar app for years now.

If you’ve never used it, Fantastical acts as the town centre for all the information you may need, compiling weather notifications, reminders, scheduled activities and notifications into one place. 

You can also do things like add social media apps for updates or add filters to give priority to certain features that you want to be alerted to.

In all, if you intend to use your Vision Pro headset for productivity and work then Fantastical for Vision OS is an excellent starting point.

2. Shortcut Buttons

This one is our favourite Vision Pro app, hands–down. It’s so simple but adds so much to the Vision Pro experience.

Vision Pro excels because of how intuitive its control system and user interface are. Just tapping your index finger and thumb together to select things is genius.

Even so, navigating menus to find your favourite apps can be fiddly and time-consuming.

Enter Shortcut Buttons. This app allows you to add shortcuts for a variety of functions, accessible from any place inside your headset. For example, you can add a shortcut tile to your Vision Pro display that allows instant volume adjustment or launch specific apps.

Trust us, being able to just open an app without accessing menus saves a significant amount of time. The key to VR’s success is all about making it as unobtrusive as possible, there is no doubt Shortcut Buttons does this for Vision Pro.

3. Juno for Youtube

Everyone is annoyed that there is no YouTube app for Vision OS yet. As the most used video platform in the world, it’s a major bummer for Apple considering most people want to use Vision Pro just to watch content.

Thankfully, there is an alternative. Juno for YouTube, created by Christian Selig, works some excellent behind-the-scenes magic to give you access to a form of YouTube via an app. You know, instead of having to use Safari.

Juno works by basically retrieving and showing you an embedded version of a video from the YouTube website. Then, using JavaScript, Juno allows you to interact with the video as you would on YouTube, such as skipping forwards or backwards.

Because the YouTube website is at the heart of the app, Juno also means you can browse YouTube freely. It still shows ads and can even recognise if you are a YouTube Premium subscriber. Honestly, there isn’t anything to dislike.

It’s a no-brainer download on day one of ownership, as long as you don’t mind paying $5.

4. Keynote

Keynote is simple, and yet one of the most effective Vision Pro apps. It virtually places you in a space like a theatre so you can practice your presenting skills with your slides behind you.

It is particularly useful for rehearsing how to physically refer to slides or a presentation, something you can’t do when just running through them on a laptop.

5. Microsoft 365

Securing Microsoft 365 for Vision Pro on release is a big win for Apple. The boffins at Cupertino want Vision Pro to herald the age of ‘Spatial Computing’; basically using a computer as you would, but instead in VR.

That means Apple is targeting those who may want to use Vision Pro for productivity. They need to persuade people that choosing VR over a normal MacBook or Mac is both functional and worthwhile.

Being able to access Microsoft 365 is the bedrock upon which Spatial Computing can be built. People want to use the software they are familiar with, not some cumbersome unknown made just for Vision OS.

Bringing with it separate apps for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more, Microsoft 365 brings all you could need. And instead of just being lazy ports, they all make use of Vision OS in unique ways.

PowerPoint, for example, allows you to create immersive and interactive presentations. And, brace for the most boring sentence you’ve ever heard, 3D graphs never looked so good!

You can also use Microsoft Teams, but it is nowhere near as cool as FaceTime.

Conclusion

Right now, the $3,499 price tag on the Apple Vision Pro is hard to justify for most. That’s not to say it’s bad, it is a truly excellent bit of tech and will only get better with more apps.

But the cost is massive, especially when you have to consider that to use it as a computer, it is best connected to a MacBook. Therefore, you need to spend more on that bit of tech too.

Even so, there is genuine potential to increase efficiency with Vision Pro. It is so slick, intuitive and immersive that when the cost comes down it will be hard to resist. And the Vision Pro apps listed here are worth your while when that time comes.

Next: All The Apple Vision Pro Accessories You Can Buy Right Now