System Menu appears on finger pinch – how to disable it?

Hello there!

You cannot disable the System menu as it is a safety feature incase of an app malfunctioning. I am unable to give any suggestions regarding third party apps or work arounds that may disable this safety feature. 

Hope this helps!

Thanks for your reply!

I understand that the System Menu cannot be disabled because it’s a safety feature — that makes sense.

However, I wonder if it’s possible to relocate or remap the System Menu gesture instead of disabling it.
For example, could it be triggered by tapping a small button or hotspot on the user’s wrist (like a wrist-mounted menu), rather than the current pinch gesture?

That way, the safety menu would still remain accessible, but users wouldn’t accidentally open it during natural hand interactions in hand-tracking mode.

Is there any existing setting, API, or design guidance for customizing the System Menu gesture location or trigger area?

Thanks again for your time!

 Naetib

Thanks GATORSAURU5​  for the clarification from the Meta team, and thanks @CoalCar-Shane for sharing your insights as well.
I completely understand that the System Menu gesture is system-wide and shouldn’t be remapped within apps.

However, according to Meta’s official Wrist Buttons design doc, it said:
The wrist button appears in 2 opposing forms, a button on the user’s primary arm’s wrist and the user’s secondary arm’s wrist ... A single tap or press can be performed on both wrist buttons, while a long press can only be performed on the Meta wrist button.

That design actually seems like the perfect solution to my original problem (accidental menu openings during normal two-hand interactions).
In addition, the pinch gesture is intended only for single-hand use

But currently, on Quest 3, the OS still triggers the System Menu with a pinch even when both hands are visible and Wrist Meta Button mode is enabled, which doesn’t match the intended behavior described in the documentation.

This might indicate a bug or unintended system behavior, rather than a deliberate UX decision.

Would it be possible for the OS team to review this logic so that the pinch gesture only activates the System Menu when one hand is tracked, and the wrist-tap gesture is required when both hands are visible?

This would stay consistent with Meta’s own design guidelines while preventing accidental activations and preserving accessibility for single-hand users.

Hi again, just checking if this observation about the Wrist Meta Button pinch behavior has been shared with the OS or UX team yet.
It still seems inconsistent with the design doc (pinch triggers even with both hands visible), so I wanted to confirm whether this is being tracked as a potential system issue.

Update (Quest OS v81.1034 – Nov 05, 2025):

I just noticed that in the newest Quest OS build (v81.1034), the option for the Wrist Meta Button has been hidden from the Advanced Settings menu.
The official Wrist Buttons design doc is still live and unchanged, so I’m hoping this might be part of a larger revision or fix related to the pinch-activation behavior mentioned above.

It would be great if that’s the case — the feature has a lot of potential when refined.
I’ll keep an eye on future updates, but I wanted to note this change in case it helps confirm that the team is already working on improvements.

After updating to Quest OS v81.1034 (Nov 05, 2025), I noticed that the Wrist Meta Button setting has been removed (or hidden) from the Advanced Settings menu.
The official Wrist Buttons design doc is still available and unchanged, so I’m hoping this might be part of an ongoing revision or bug fix.

Before this update, the feature had a noticeable inconsistency with the official documentation:
According to the design doc, the two-hand interaction (tapping or pressing the wrist button with the opposite hand’s index finger) is the intended default, while the single-hand pinch gesture is an accessibility fallback — to be used only when it’s not comfortable or possible to use both hands.
However, in actual behavior, the OS triggered the System Menu with a pinch even when both hands were tracked, making the fallback gesture always active instead of conditional.

I’m hoping the removal of the Wrist Meta Button setting in v81.1034 may be related to fixing or revising this behavior.
If this change is intentional, it would be great to have an update or clarification in the documentation or release notes, since the feature had strong potential for accessibility and kiosk/demo experiences.

Environment:

• Device: Meta Quest 3
• OS Version: v81.1034 (Nov 05, 2025)
• Hand Tracking: ON
• Controllers: OFF

Reference:
Previous discussion and bug report about pinch behavior:
System Menu appears on finger pinch – how to disable it?

Hi Meta team,

I’d like to clarify something after the recent OS changes in Meta Horizon OS v81.1034 (Nov 2025).

The Wrist Meta Button option has now been removed/hidden from Advanced Settings.
However, this removal doesn’t address the original issue that many developers (including me) reported: System Menu appears on finger pinch – how to disable it?

The System Menu still opens with a pinch gesture even when both hands are tracked.

According to the Wrist Buttons documentation, the pinch gesture is meant to be a single-hand fallback when the user cannot comfortably use both hands.
But in practice, pinch-to-open is still active globally, even in full two-hand tracking mode — which leads to accidental System Menu activations in hand-tracking apps, demo experiences, trade-show use cases, etc.

Wrist meta button

The important part: Wrist Meta Button was actually a very useful feature.

It wasn’t fundamentally broken — it just needed one simple condition check:

Only allow pinch-to-open when exactly one hand is detected.
Ignore pinch when both hands are visible.

This preserves the safety requirement (always having a way to open the menu),
while preventing accidental triggers and keeping the Wrist Meta Button feature viable.

I’m hoping the feature was removed only temporarily and not fully deprecated, because it has a lot of potential — especially for accessibility and kiosk-style applications.

If possible, I’d love some clarification on whether Wrist Meta Button is being revised or permanently removed, and whether the pinch activation logic can be updated so it behaves as intended (single-hand fallback only).

Thanks for reading, and I appreciate any update the OS or UX team can provide.