Turns out, Quest Pro controllers have a hidden touchpad

What you need to know

• The thumb rest on the Meta Quest Touch Pro controllers allegedly also functions as a working trackpad.
• This feature is not mentioned in the official documentation for the controllers.
• It's possible that Meta is planning on rolling the feature out in the future update for developers to use.

While Meta's latest VR headset was released just a few weeks ago, new revelations about the headset's design and possible features keep cropping up. It was found that the depth sensor Mark Zuckerberg talked about back in May was removed from the final product over possible dubious use cases, and now we're seeing an interesting new feature in the Quest Touch Pro controllers that's been kept a secret until now.

On Twitter, user Shiny Quagsire found that the thumb rest on the Quest Pro controller does a lot more than the official controller documentation suggests. While Meta openly advertises the fact that this pad can detect pressure input — which can be used for more accurately grabbing and squeezing objects in VR — it looks like it also supports thumb tracking and can act as a touchpad.

In the video above, you can see the on-screen cursor moving around as he moves his thumb on the touchpad. If Meta were to roll out an updated development kit that gives developers official access to this feature, it could be used for things like on-screen cursors or other types of input that works better on a touchpad.

We saw earlier today that Meta is beginning to roll out a new way to connect the Quest Pro to PCs using an app called Remote Desktop, and it's entirely feasible that this newly discovered touchpad feature could make its way to the system in a later update. For now, though, developers can only target the thumb rest force axis. If nothing, it's fascinating to see what these controllers can do, especially since each controller packs in a Snapdragon chipset and is, essentially, a computer in and of itself.

Quest Touch Pro controllers will be sold separately for $300 in the near future, although you can preorder them from Meta using the link below. These controllers ship with the Meta Quest Pro headset but also work on a Quest 2, giving users better tracking in all their apps and games.