View 360° photos in VR, straight from your browser

On a VR headset (Meta Quest, Pico, and other WebXR browsers)

Standalone headsets ship with a browser that supports WebXR, the web standard for immersive sessions. That means the viewer runs inside the headset with no sideloading and no app store:

1. Put on the headset and open the browser (Meta Quest Browser on Quest 2, 3 and 3S; Pico Browser; Wolvic on other devices).
2. Go to free360viewer.com and load a photo. The quickest route is a photo that is already online: open free360viewer.com/?url= followed by the image address, or paste a share link someone sent you.
3. Press VR in the viewer's control bar. The browser asks once for permission to start an immersive session.
4. Look around. The panorama surrounds you at full scale and follows your head with no lag; press the controller's menu or back button to leave the session.

Photos stored on the headset itself can be opened with Choose a 360° photo, which opens the headset's file picker. For photos on your computer, the easiest path is to host them: a free Orbix360 account uploads a photo and gives it a link you can open in the headset, or in any browser.

Stereoscopic (3D) 360° photos, stored as a top/bottom stack, get true depth in a headset: each eye receives its own panorama. Square images are detected as stereo automatically; the 3D top/bottom button overrides the detection.

On a phone with Google Cardboard (Android and iPhone)

Any phone becomes a VR viewer with a Cardboard-style holder. On a phone the VR button switches the viewer to a split-screen stereo view driven by the phone's gyroscope, so turning your head turns the view.

1. Open free360viewer.com in Safari (iPhone) or Chrome (Android) and load a 360° photo from your camera roll or from a link.
2. Press VR. iPhone asks once for motion-sensor permission; allow it, otherwise the view cannot follow your head.
3. The page goes fullscreen and splits into left and right eye views. Slide the phone into the Cardboard viewer.
4. Look around by turning your head. Press Exit VR, or leave fullscreen, to return to the normal view.

iPhone support is worth calling out: most browser-based panorama viewers fall back to a flat view on iOS because Safari has no WebXR. This viewer renders the split-screen Cardboard mode itself, so it works on iPhone as well as Android.

Requirements and troubleshooting

• Headset mode needs a WebXR-capable browser. Meta Quest Browser, Pico Browser and Wolvic qualify; Safari on Apple Vision Pro supports WebXR when the feature flag is enabled in Settings → Safari → Advanced.
• Cardboard mode needs a phone with motion sensors and a secure (HTTPS) page, which free360viewer.com always is. Desktop browsers, which have no gyroscope, don't show the VR button unless a headset is connected.
• No VR button? The viewer hides it when neither a WebXR session nor motion sensors are available. On iPhone, refresh the page and allow motion access when prompted.
• Blurry in the headset? Very large photos are downscaled to the GPU's texture limit (usually 8K on standalone headsets). An 8192×4096 photo is the sweet spot; anything larger gives no extra detail in VR.
• Wrong depth in 3D? Toggle 3D top/bottom off if the photo is mono, or on if it is a stereo pair the viewer did not detect.

Sharing a VR-ready photo

For a photo hosted at a public URL, Share & embed in the viewer produces a link that opens directly in VR-capable browsers, facing the direction you chose. Send it to someone with a Quest and they press VR; send it to someone with a phone and they get Cardboard mode. The same panel produces an iframe embed with VR enabled.

To go beyond a single photo, connect several into a virtual tour with Orbix360: tours built there play in the same headsets and phones, with hotspots to move between rooms.

Frequently asked questions

Try it now

Everything above works in the viewer on this site: pick a 360° photo, look around, step into VR, export a video or grab an embed code. Photos never leave your browser.