Tag: #Mobile

The Second Life Mobile App Experience Mid 2026

I last wrote about the Second Life Mobile App back in December 2024 a month after it’s public Beta release when Linden Lab held a blogger call to tell everyone what was upcoming. I know they’ve been making may continuous developments, so I thought I’d give the latest signup process a go and see what … Continue reading “The Second Life Mobile App Experience Mid 2026”

I last wrote about the Second Life Mobile App back in December 2024 a month after it’s public Beta release when Linden Lab held a blogger call to tell everyone what was upcoming. I know they’ve been making may continuous developments, so I thought I’d give the latest signup process a go and see what it was like for a new user accessing the grid for the first time on a smartphone.

I’m aware some of this isn’t news to many people, but I wanted to try and be thorough.

The sign up process was pretty standard, so I’ll skip that here and go to the avatar customisation bit. This all takes place in the app after registration and before your avatar appears inworld.

Now this is all great, but there’s one big catch to it; it’s all uses Linden Lab’s own Senra body that few creators design for. Fortunately there’s the Welcome Pack now in the Library section of the inventory and its available in the app by going to the Avatar section screen, so more on that later.

I also happen to have arrived in what would appear to be a regular arrival point, with a single sign explaining how to move, same as it’s been for quite a while. However I was wrong, this place is actually among the Mobile Showcase destinations, make of that what you will.

That is where this post may have ended if I’d not seen a post by Daniel Voyager about the new Mobile Learning Centre 2026.

It seems since I created that new avatar Linden Lab have put some effort into a new on-boarding location. I logged back in with the mobile app and sure enough there was the Mobile Learning Centre on the login screen, so I went to have a look.

If I’d arrived here, I’d have been a little more impressed. It has a game-like activity to help you learn how to control your avatar. You must collect coloured stars, by bumping into them, to open doors. However some of them require you to fly (or the floor fall away underneath you), so you do learn more than just walking. On the whole a much better experience than I had a little while ago.

Unfortunately when someone on the app asks you “How do I get my avatar to look like that?”, things aren’t quite so slick.

As I mentioned above the Avatar Welcome Pack from your inventory Library, is accessible via the Avatar option on the app menu and lets you choose from a few different body types and a few outfits for each.

There’s a very big difference here from the avatar you created at registration though. These selections actually remove the Senra mesh body and replaces it with a Legacy Special Edition body and a Lelutka mesh head. This means you can now wear anything made to fit the Legacy body series, which is well catered for by designers. The Lelutka head means most skins, tattoos and makeups will work just fine too. (Note though that this body and head will get you started, they have some limited capabilities, mainly not including HUDs for making certain changes.)

So now with a head and body that stuff will actually work with, and SLB23 in full swing, there’s a Shop & Hop I can go visit to kit out the new avatar..sort of.

The app let’s you wander around the different stores at the Shop & Hop, clicking the gift boxes to receive the goodies. Sadly there’s currently no way yet to check you received the item, or unpack and wear them because there’s still no inventory access from the mobile app.

This meant I had to switch to the Desktop viewer to overhaul my new avatar with my collected freebies.

You can switch between outfits in the mobile app which is helpful, but you can’t put together an outfit there, except for those made using the avatar selection options. For those residents that might be using primarily mobile, this turns the desktop viewer into a changing room where you have to log on and put your looks together for use on Mobile.

In my December 2024 post I discuss some key features the Lab were planning to bring to Mobile. 18 Months later,how have they done?

  • Lobby – Pass
  • Address Bar – Pass
  • New account creation – Pass
  • Persistent chat logs & Group Notice Push notifications – Pass
  • Notecards – (Grumpity Linden said “Three Months Plus”) – Fail
  • Item level avatar editing – Fail

The ones that passed did so within their 2025 targets. The app and the experience of using it has come on leaps and bounds since public release, but there’s a way to go yet,  if they want the experience to resemble the online video marketing.

For me personally it’s nearly there; hovertext and dialog box support have been added,  we just need HUD support and rezzing from inventory and I’ll be able to play Herb & Fable on my phone!

A final note on my Mobile experience I’d like to give a shout out to Prima Linden for being so welcoming when I first logge

The Call…to Mobile and a note on Unity

On Friday night I was in a Zoom conference call between a collection of bloggers and Linden Lab Executives.

If you’d told me that 5 years ago when I started my little blog, I wouldn’t have believed you. So thank you Linden Lab for the opportunity. Brad Oberwager (CEO of Linden Lab) did say that they wanted our honest opinions, so here it is.

The focus was on the Second Life Mobile App and what’s on the horizon. There’s a lot to go through, so please bear with me.

I’ve addressed these not in the chronological order that they’re going to arrive, but roughly the order I think they should have, with their ETAs.

  • Address Bar – Q1 2025
  • Notecards – Not on the slides but Grumpity Linden said “Three Months Plus”
  • New account creation – December 2024
  • Persistent chat logs & Group Notice Push notifications – December 2024
  • Item level avatar editing – Early Q2 2025
  • Lobby – Q1 2025

Franky I think the app shouldn’t have gone to Public Beta until the first three were added, but they’re finally coming. Simply because if you told someone about the App, they’d go try it and find they couldn’t do much and delete it. Maybe a New Year big splash release with these features might have been better.

Address Bar: One of the major missing features in the mobile app is getting around. Currently in both the Alpha & Beta versions, you can only go to the Mobile Showcase locations and your Favourites (the ones stuck at the top of your desktop viewer). Fortunately this feature coming soon that will allow you to enter SLURL location addresses and also Share them using your device’s native Sharing system.

Notecards: One of the bloggers raised a question about notecards, particularly for CSRs (Customer Support Representatives) for creators. If a customer has a problem, they may send a notecard detailing the issue.

However on the mobile app there’s currently no way to open them,so the CSRs are tied to a PC in order to read the notes and respond. Grumpity Linden revealed that they are working on a way to read them. However it’s likely to be in a different way. Since there’s no access to avatars Inventory on mobile, the in-progress solution is to have the notecards read out in a chat dialog. This will be a great step forward for this group of Residents, but sadly they’ll have to wait a little longer. The timescale for this ability is estimated at three months or more.

Note: this was right at the end of the call, past the official end time, so several attendees had left and not many people will have heard the above.

New Accounts: Pretty self explanatory, despite the app not being targeted at new signups, this needed to be here at Beta Release. If people see screenshots or hear about there being this cool new app and they weren’t an existing Resident, they’d have been stuck.

Persistent chat logs: Peviously on the mobile app, if you log out and back in your conversation history will be lost. In an update this month, the chat history will be stored locally on your device.

Item level  avatar editing: Something that wasn’t mentioned much, but is featured on the presentation slides is individually worn items adjustment.

Lobby: Basically a holding screen showing you stuff while the world loads. They probably spent ages on it (speculation) but I don’t see it as a big deal. The only tempting point on the slide image is “Reach mid-tier and lower end devices”, perhaps this needs a little more emphasis, if the intention is to attract users with older tech.

Comment on Unity

A last point made by Philip Linden regarding a pre-submitted question. Paraphrased: “Now that Linden Lab have a working visual rendering engine on the Unity platform, will the desktop client move to Unity?” In short, no.

The reason for this is fairly simple, according to Philip: “The Unity engine can’t render as many avatars in close proximity.”

I know for a long time people have been harping on about this at Meet the Lindens events, now they have an answer and a reason.

Summary:

Well done Linden Lab, your mobile feature set is nearly level with the Lumiya Viewer (2012-2017 RIP), except with additions of Mesh & BoM but minus Inventory. I’m sure they’re sick of that comparison, but it was ahead of its time and is an unavoidable benchmark.

The Zoom call on Friday is likely to be the first of several to come. Perhaps this process of reaching out and connecting with Bloggers & Vloggers, allowing early previews, should have started before the Beta public release. That way the Lab may have been dissuaded from releasing an under-developed product.

So as I said in my previous post on this subject, do give it a go, but don’t expect too much yet. Then come back in a month and try again, it is after all still a Beta version.

Second Life Mobile for All

Last year I signed up for the Alpha Testing programme for a Second Life mobile app, restricted to Premium Plus subscribers. It was pretty flakey back then. But fast forward to Thursday 14th November and it’s now been made available as an open Beta for every Second Life resident and works pretty well.

So should you download it? I’d say Yes, but limit your expectations. This is not a desktop equivalent or replacement, more a companion app. You can walk about, change between saved Outfits and Teleport to your set Favourite locations and a few specific places. Chatting in groups and nearby chat works well enough and you can pay items such as rent boxes or shop vendor boards(making a use-case). Streaming music as you may find playing in a club is a feature too, but I’ve not tried visiting such a location on the app yet.

I have been giving the latest version of the Android app a go and it’s a great improvement on the early Alpha builds. One thing I’d definitely recommend when first trying it out is make sure you have a lot of space! It can take a while to get used to the controls and you don’t want to be stuck in the corner of a sky box while you experiment.

I used my homestead Bloodrose Bay simply because that’s where I happened to have been last. It turned out to be quite a good choice. The buildings I have set out are spacious inside and there are some with and without doors to enter. There’s also what’s often the bane of SL exploring..spiral stairs, indoor and out.

While this all looks pretty good for a mobile viewer, nothing apart from the trees have PBR (Physically Based Rendering) textures. Hopefully Linden Lab will get their shiny new texture system to work in their shiny new app.

The unrezzed white things down there are trees with PBR textures.

Screenshots taken on a Google Pixel 7 using default app settings.

The aim of the app is to try and bring back old residents that have left SL, because “It’s not on mobile” is apparently a reason many no longer log in. I wasn’t amongst the bloggers invited to a Zoom call with Linden Lab executives (Edit: turns out they sent the invite to a different email address, so I’ll be watching out for the next one!) to discuss/announce all this, so I’m going on quotes from a couple of people that were:

I’m impressed with what Linden Lab have created and would have been great all round, if it weren’t lacking PBR support. However the target audience (old users that haven’t logged in for ages) are unlikely to have any PBR clothing in their inventory anyway.

PBR clothing is just blank without any fallback textures. Which is the way many creators are going.

Link: Official App Promotion Page with Downloads

What’s PBR: Second Life Wiki

First thoughts on the Second Life Mobile App Alpha

You can’t have missed the news that Linden Lab have released a Mobile App for Second Life for Alpha Testing. If you did, here’s the press releases:

Second Life Mobile – Now in Private Alpha

The Alpha Testing is open to Residents with a Premium Plus subscription, so I put in an application straight away and was accepted.

A couple of days later I have the app running on my phone and it’s so much better than I’d have expected at such an early stage.

After a few false starts (there are issues with passwords and mine was too complicated) I was able to log in.

The first thing you’re greeted with is a basic movement tutorial:

The movement controls felt a bit like Roblox, which is no bad thing, it means exiting phone gamers will get the hang of it pretty quickly. However I’m not one of those and I was dreadful at playing Roblox, so will need more practice.

My avatar and the skybox around me loaded up surprisingly fast and looked pretty good quality for an Alpha mobile app. Although my avatar does look a little perturbed it’s only because I had been fiddling with face animations on my previous login on my laptop.

Since the skybox was pretty cramped,I thought I should check out some more spacious surroundings, fortunately some are provided. These are accessible from the login screen, or a menu once logged in.

I chose the Nom Nom Cafe Library from the list and hit Teleport. This was an interesting experience, in that your view switches to one form above, as if you are being dropped from a great height to your destination, but looks quite cool.

On the ground the surroundings rezzed in pretty quickly and the place looks quite lovely on a mobile screen.

So far I’ve just tried basic moving about and teleporting to places and I’m pretty impressed with what I’ve seen. The graphics are detailed and didn’t appear to stutter as I moved. However a fairly modern smartphone or tablet is required to run the app, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. I will have to see how it works on my untidy homestead and other non-showcase locations.

I’ve not tried any kind of communication yet, so I’ll follow up with another post on how well those aspects work at a later date.

If you have a Premium Plus membership and want to give the app a try, you can find the details for applying in the press release above.