Meta enables adb on deprecated Portal devices

Meta has quietly cracked open its old Portal smart display devices, letting owners turn on a hidden developer mode that makes the abandoned gadgets more customizable. The spark came from a video by Meta executive Andrew Bosworth, who showed off a homemade “home hub” and basically told people: go build your own. For owners of these dusty screens, that sounded less like a product update and more like a surprise plot twist.

And wow, the community reaction was all over the place. One camp was instantly suspicious: wasn’t this the same Portal Meta stripped down so hard that, as one commenter put it, it became little more than a Bluetooth speaker with calling apps? That complaint became the thread’s biggest mood: people are thrilled these devices may finally be useful again, but they’re also dragging Meta for locking them down after removing most of the original features. In other words, users are asking whether this is generosity… or cleanup duty.

Then came the chaos. Some people couldn’t even view the original announcement without a Meta account and begged for a copy-paste version, which added a perfect layer of “classic Meta” frustration. Others pointed out that a setting to enable this feature had apparently been teased for weeks without actually showing up, which made the rollout feel a bit like a scavenger hunt designed by gremlins. Still, the hopeful crowd sees bigger stakes: if Meta is loosening up old Portal devices, could dead Quest headsets be next? The dream is simple: stop turning old hardware into paperweights and let owners actually tinker with the stuff they already paid for.