Your Android XR strategy: An evolution, not a revolution

Let's be honest. When we hear about "The Metaverse" or "XR," our minds often jump to complex, headset-exclusive games. For those of us building and maintaining e-commerce, travel, productivity or other apps, this can feel distant and irrelevant; a costly distraction from our core business.

I am going to offer a different perspective. For most modern Android applications, the path to becoming "XR-ready" is not a revolutionary rewrite. It's a simple, logical evolution of the best practices we have already been adopting. If you have invested in building a great large-screen experience for your app, you are already most of the way there.

Your head start: Why large screen optimisation is 90% of the battle

Think about what it means to optimise and differentiate an app for tablets and foldables; you will have already stopped making assumptions. Your UI is no longer a static, 360dp-wide canvas. It reflows, adapts, and uses panels and component-based layouts to make intelligent use of the space.

Source: android.com

Link: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/joKQBmZN0XcPa3bq280151MiYSSX-5rR4T3QRWUtGjhI6S5eW2GHoMvWIh5uVGE-v5HB7AEjQds6DoT4Drfz-6XLr4naBumKQFqik3QPXLVlS4L2vOs=w600-rwa-e366-v1

Now, think of an XR environment. At its simplest, it is an infinite canvas. An operating system in XR can present apps as 2D windows, or "panels," floating in a 3D space. An app that knows how to adapt its layout from a phone to a tablet has already solved the core logical puzzle of how to exist in this new context. It has proven it is not tied to a single aspect ratio or screen size.

This is the first, and most crucial, step: compatibility. Your well-architected app can simply exist in an XR world with little to no code changes. Ensuring your service is not left behind as new hardware emerges.

From compatibility to optimised

Source: https://developer.android.com/

Link: https://developer.android.com/static/images/develop/xr/jetpack-xr-sdk/material-design/navigation-rail-spatial.jpg

Having an app that works is one thing. Having one that feels good to use is another. Once your app is compatible, the next step is to optimise its behaviour for the new paradigms of XR. This is less about adding new features and more about being a good citizen in this new environment.

The great news? If your codebase is using the Google Material3 UI library, lots of this work is done for you. Hover states, multimodal input handling and spatial dialogs come as standard.

To enable this behaviour, simply wrap your compose hierarchy in EnableXrComponentOverrides.

After enabling XR behaviours in Material3, review your app against the XR guidelines. Add the ability to move into "full space". Look for opportunities to move content into panels. Add panel user controls for resizing and moving. These will provide an optimised experience for your users.

From optimised to enrichment

Once your app feels at home as a 2D panel, you can begin to add moments of true enrichment. This is not about rebuilding your app in 3D. It is about adding discrete, high-value features that leverage the unique capabilities of XR.

• For an E-commerce App: You have a product details page. Next to the image carousel, you add a "View in your space" button. Tapping this opens a contained ARCore-powered view that lets the user place a true-to-scale 3D model of that sofa in their own living room. The core e-commerce experience remains. But now the purchase decision is supported by a powerful, confidence-building tool. The user can see in the nearest to “real” way the result of their potential purchase.

• For a Travel App: A user is looking at a hotel page. Alongside the photos, there is a "Take a virtual tour" button. This places the user in the room or allows them to walk around the hotel. This provides a much richer sense of place than a flat image gallery. The hotel and room are becoming “real” and are already making the user feel.

Get creative with the kinds of experiences you can offer. Ideate with your product and design teams. Do what you do best and come up with some great user experiences.

Begin to gather assets and content for this new world now. Are there any geospatial maps you could create? Any 3D models of products? Spatial audio clips of significant locations? To enable these rich experiences, you will likely need assets. Whether gathered, created or purchased, acquiring these could unlock some amazing use cases.

Strategy for legacy apps

What if you have an app which has not been updated to support large screens? It still uses older and even deprecated patterns. For teams in this position, my advice is direct: your most valuable XR strategy today has nothing to do with XR. Your focus should be on modernisation.

Trying to bolt XR features onto a legacy codebase that is not responsive or architecturally flexible is like trying to install a state-of-the-art home cinema in a house with crumbling foundations. The project will be challenging, the costs might spiral, and the result could disappoint or even frustrate your users.

The effort you spend adapting to large screens and moving to modern, testable architecture will deliver immediate value to your existing user base. It will improve stability, performance, and your team's development speed. As a crucial side effect, it will also give you a solid foundation upon which you can build a meaningful XR experience when the time is right. Modernisation is not a detour from your XR journey; it is the first, essential leg of the trip.

It is about evolution, not revolution

The barrier to entry for XR is not as high as you might think. It does not demand that we all become expert game developers in Unity. For the vast majority of "normal" apps, the path is an incremental one.

• First, focus on solid fundamentals. Build a responsive, adaptive UI that shines on large screens. This gives you basic XR compatibility with minimal extra cost.

• Next, optimise that experience. Lean into the spatial UI experience. Offer full space mode and spatial panels.

• Finally, identify a single, high-impact enrichment. Find one moment in your user journey that could be meaningfully improved with a dash of XR.

By treating XR as an evolutionary step, we can protect our apps' future relevance. We can delight our users without betting the company on a new and unproven platform. Look at your app today. If you have invested in a great responsive UI, you are already on the launchpad. 3, 2, 1 ...