Developers had little chance to develop apps with Apple Vision Pro hardware before its February 2 launch, resulting in a slow native app rollout of about 11 days to reach 1,000 total.
The visionOS App Store
Before the Apple Vision Pro launch, there was some concern about how many native experiences would be available when it was released to the public. Initial tallies in January placed the number around 150, but that quickly increased to 600 by February 2.
On February 13, Apple Senior Vice President of Marketing Greg Joswiak shared that the number of visionOS native apps now exceeds 1,000. The number of compatible iPhone and iPad apps has also increased to over 1.5 million.
A huge thank you to our developers! Their hard work has already resulted in over 1,000 incredible spatial apps designed specifically for Vision Pro, along with over 1.5 million compatible apps. We're thrilled to see how they'll continue to push the boundaries for what's possible.
— Greg Joswiak (@gregjoz) February 13, 2024
A native visionOS app is built with the operating system in mind. They tend to have large targets for eye tracking, glass-like frames, and interactive menus around a window called ornaments.
Compatible apps run in a flat 2D window that can be shown in portrait or landscape. They appear identically to how they look on an iPad or iPhone.
The limited number of available apps or games means the App Store is barebones in visionOS 1.0. There are very few categories, and finding apps that aren't featured in the main page's categories can be challenging.
It's still early days for Apple Vision Pro and visionOS. Since the product is only available in the United States, many popular apps likely won't be updated for visionOS until the hardware launches globally.