Monado 25.0.0, the first stable release of 2025, is now available! This milestone marks a significant leap forward for the cross-platform, open source OpenXR runtime, bringing a range of new features, key enhancements, and valuable community contributions that further solidify Monado's position as a leading open source XR runtime.

From enhanced Android support and driver updates to improved runtime stability and tooling, Collabora's XR team delivered a wide array of improvements in this release. Here’s a look at some of the most impactful contributions:

Platform & runtime infrastructure

• Rylie Pavlik, the top contributor in this release with 140 commits, significantly improved Monado's Android support and maintainability. She refactored the Android lifecycle and IPC initialization, including the creation of xrt_instance_android, and also updated OpenXR headers to 1.1.47, ensuring Monado remains aligned with the latest spec for long-term compatibility and access to new OpenXR features.
• Korcan Hussein modernized the project by migrating Monado's build to C++20, and improving Gradle configuration and package management. He also resolved Android crashes related to multi-layer rendering pipelines, improving stability on mobile platforms.

Device & driver improvements

• Christoph Haag delivered key enhancements to the SteamVR Lighthouse driver, adding brightness control, and resolving shutdown-related crashes. He also improved runtime visibility and debuggability by implementing OXR_PARALLEL_VIEWS debug logging, and introducing math utility math_quat_to_euler_angles.

Robustness & debugging

• Simon Zeni provided critical improvements to timestamp handling, Vulkan and Wayland rendering, and overall runtime stability. His work included migrating the runtime and device timestamps to use int64_t, introducing new error codes (XRT_ERROR_NOT_IMPLEMENTED, XRT_ERROR_INPUT_UNSUPPORTED), and eliminating memory-related issues such as use-after-free bugs.

Tooling & compatibility

• Charlton Rodda enhanced the binding generation system and improved profile compatibility by fixing formatting issues in autogenerated bindings, incorporating parent profile requirements, and correcting the handling of the META_touch_controller_plus interaction profile, helping to ensure broader and more accurate input support.

Open Source, open collaboration

Monado 25.0 was made possible by a vibrant community, ranging from nearly 3,000 members in the Discord chat to over 40 contributors behind more than 400 code commits in this release alone. And that doesn’t even capture the many valued individuals who share their expertise through documentation, blog posts, social media, and word of mouth. Thank you to everyone who contributes to the Open Source XR ecosystem in any form. Your diverse skills and perspectives drive this project forward. Let’s keep building things we can be proud of, together.

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