Lose the controllers! How to naturally use your Meta Quest 2 with Hand Tracking and Direct Touch

Although the Meta Quest 2 is starting to show its age, and is about to be replaced with a Quest 3 later this year, it's still arguably the most popular VR headset on the market.

And for many reasons – a low price, extremely accessible and simple set-up process, and for some of us VR fans – the fact that Meta keeps adding fun, new features to it.

One of the most exciting new features the Quest 2 received is hand tracking, which gives you the option to drop those physical controllers that you're normally required to hold all the time, and just use the "pointing devices" nature gave you – your hands. And hand gestures.

So, how to enable hand tracking on the Quest 2, what can you do with it, and what hand gestures are supported – let's find out!

Note: This also works with other modern Meta headsets, such as the Quest Pro!

Enabling hand tracking on the Quest 2

As Meta often moves things around in the settings menu, you may have seen the hand tracking option before, where it's now gone, but the good news is – its new spot is quite easy to find.

Step 1: From the Meta Quest 2's home screen, click on the clock (bottom left corner)

From the Quest 2 home screen (where you land after exiting a game), find the clock, which is on the far left side of the app dock. Click the clock, and you'll see a new menu pop up.

Step 2: From here, click on "Settings" (top right corner)

This menu allows you to connect to a Wi-Fi network, among other things, but what we want to do right now is click the "Settings" button, which is on its top right corner.

Step 3: Click on "Movement Tracking"

Now that you're in the "Settings" menu, you'll see all sorts of options for customizing your headset. Click on "Movement Tracking", which is where hand tracking can be enabled from.

Step 4: Click on "Hand Tracking" to enable it

Here you have only two simple options – to enable "Hand Tracking", and to switch between which hand is responsible for going to the home screen, and which will be used for centering the screen, when you need those shortcuts. Click "Hand Tracking" to enable it.

You'll be shown a hand tracking privacy notice, which basically informs you that Meta will collect information about your hand pose for processing. You need to agree with this by clicking "Enable" here, in order to use hand tracking.

Now you'll see a tutorial video explaining the core hand gestures you'll need to know, in order to fully take advantage of this feature. We'll get to those below…

Quest 2 hand tracking gestures

Pointing – simply raise your hand, and you'll see a virtual pointer representing it. Move your hand around to also move this virtual cursor. As of recently, simply moving your wrist also works.

Pinch to select – by pinching with your thumb and index finger, you will perform a "click", just as you did by pressing your Quest 2 controllers' trigger buttons. This gesture is most commonly used for clicking things around the user interface – toggles, buttons, etc.

Pinch and hold to scroll, resize and move windows and pages – similarly to the gesture above, if you pinch, but this time hold your fingers pinched, it would result in a "holding" gesture, which allows you to scroll through windows and web pages. This gesture can also be used to move windows around (even the app dock), and resize certain windows that support it.

The Quick Actions menu gesture – turn your hand around, with the palm facing your face, which will give you an option to trigger the Quest's Quick Actions menu. From it, you can start a video recording, center your screen, trigger a voice command, or hide/reveal the home screen.

This one is a bit finicky at first, until you learn to pinch in a way that the headset will recognize – your palm should be facing your face, so that the Quest sees it, and you should pinch with only your index finger and thumb afterwards, not three fingers as you may be inclined to. As in that case, the headset may not recognize the gesture.

Using both hands – you can indeed use both hands to perform these gestures simultaneously – the Quest can track the two without any issues.

How to switch between controllers and your hands on the fly

If you wish to go back to your (objectively more precise) controllers, simply pick them up, and the Quest will detect this, disabling hand gestures.



In order to switch from controllers to hand gestures again, simply place your controllers face-down on a flat surface, and point your palms towards your face. Your Quest should detect this, and switch back to hand gestures only.

Using hand tracking with the new Direct Touch feature, and making the best of it

Very recently Meta rolled out a new experimental feature called Direct Touch. Experimental means it could go away at any time, or alternatively – become a main hand tracking feature, but we'll have to wait and see.

Regardless, the feature is currently available, and can be enabled by going to the "Settings" menu again, clicking "Experimental", and toggling "Direct Touch" on. You'll be asked to reset your headset, after which the feature will be enabled.

Direct Touch compliments hand tracking, by allowing you to naturally press buttons in the Quest 2's interface, instead of pointing a virtual cursor at them and pinching in the air.

You'll now notice that the user interface is closer to you, so that you can "physically" reach out and touch it.

Simply make a pointing gesture with your hand, and use your index finger to press buttons around the interface, as if you're pressing the screen of a tablet floating in front of you.

Similarly, scrolling with Direct Touch on is vastly more natural. Say you open the web browser and you load a web page. With this feature on, you don't need to pinch and scroll in the air, but simply place your index finger where the page is and swipe up, to scroll down, just like you would on a tablet.

Pretty cool, huh? I advise you to check out this feature while it's available, especially if you're a fan of such neat features, who may regret not experiencing it, should Meta decide to remove it later.