Quest 3 Passthrough Pausing SteamLink/Apps - Intended Change or Bug?

Hi everyone, 👋

I've been using my Quest 3 since early 2024 for both gaming 🎮 and work 💼.

I got very used to a specific workflow with SteamLink: I could activate Passthrough, walk over to my PC to do something quickly, and the connection would stay active. I could still hear my friends on Discord, and the game would continue running in the background, tracking my position. It was an incredibly useful feature! ✨

However, after a recent break from VR, I've noticed a major change. Now, whenever I enable Passthrough, the entire SteamLink session pauses completely. ⏸️ No audio comes through, SteamVR reports that the headset is disconnected (sometimes even going into standby if I take too long), and my in-game avatar freezes in place.

My first thought was, "This must be a SteamLink issue!" But after testing several other PC VR and Quest apps (for both work and gaming), I found the exact same pausing behavior happens with all of them. This makes me think it's a change in the Quest's OS itself.

I've done some research but can't find any official mention of this behavior ever being a feature. So now I'm wondering if I was benefiting from an "It's a feature, not a bug™" type of bug that has now been 'fixed'. 🤔

So, my questions for the community are:
 - Can anyone else confirm this change in behavior? Was having apps run in the background during Passthrough the intended functionality before?
 - If this was an intended feature that got removed, is there any way to re-enable it? It was incredibly helpful. 🙏
 - If this was never an intended feature, I'd like to formally request that the developers consider adding this as an optional setting!

Thanks for any help you can provide, and have a great day! 😊