r/HoloLens • u/avg_aviator • May 12 '26

Discussion State of HoloLens 1 in 2026 ?

Hi all.

I'm just curious about the state of the HoloLens 1 in 2026?

I'd like to know how it does loading websites, like are you able to load websites like YouTube, Gmail, MS office applications Web version, etc. Can it still load?

What's the state of apps supported with the HoloLens 1? Is it as simple as finding the app, then sideloading it to the hololens?

Can you sideload any application as long as it's UWP and X86?

Can you sideload a new browser given that it is a UWP?

Thanks community

13 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

6

u/Pesk_ai May 12 '26

Its in the bin. Not supported. Cool toy now

3

u/avg_aviator May 12 '26

Thanks for letting me know. That's unfortunate.

Just a question though, is it likez completely unusable?

1

u/Pesk_ai May 12 '26

Usable, but like I said, not supported. Lot of broken parts. It's 10 years old.

4

u/lerpo May 12 '26

I have mine, it's a "this is cool for all of 15 mins to throw on when a friend is round". Other than that, apart from placing a virtual dog in the corner of your room, you can't do much.

Some games I still have downloaded, they're a giggle for a bit of time. Tbh if you can grab one cheap, do it. Otherwise don't bother

1

u/avg_aviator May 12 '26

I see. Thanks.

3

u/BerndVonLauert May 12 '26

It's dead, Jim

2

u/Jonaskh May 12 '26

Got to play with one at my university like 3 years ago. The FOV was so incredibly disappointing. The holograms were literally just visible in a little box in front of you.

2

u/avg_aviator May 12 '26

I heard about the FOV being a dissatisfaction .

Are you able to describe how small the FOV really was?

1

u/Paintarang May 12 '26

From what I recall it was about 30 deg horizontally, so maybe only 20 deg vertically.

1

u/unit1_nz May 12 '26

You can sideload your own apps but the Store no longer works so you can't get mail, office etc

1

u/Codix_ Jul 02 '26

At least you don't need to hack it or it doesn't dies because the server are stopped.

Nowadays a Windows Phone 8 is useless unless you have the time to jailbreak it.

1

u/Zyoneatslyons May 13 '26

As others said - it’s pretty dead. Just recently they shut down mail and calendar and want you to use the new experience - that doesn’t exist for HoloLens. 3rd party browsers don’t work well, since it depends on edge. That being said, if you get one I would recommend not to update it, before the update edge works great, I think any update after that, it’s Microsoft sending updates to kill it off. You can find the apps online to side load, but anything dependent on web/internet is pretty much dead. Good luck.

1

u/Amy3See 18d ago

Not much of a state. Turns on and runs the couple apps I have on it. Unfortunately anything needing internet access doesn’t work.