Techniques described herein enable a virtual mobile device representing a user's physical mobile device to be used in artificial reality, such as VR, MR, and AR. An artificial-reality head-mounted device worn by a user may present to the user a virtual mobile application on a virtual mobile device in a virtual environment. The virtual mobile application is a virtual representation of a mobile application that is native to an operating system of a physical mobile device. In particular embodiments, the mobile application may be hosted on a virtual machine for the operating system, which may be different from the operating system of the artificial-reality headset. The user may interact with the virtual mobile application in three-dimensional space. The artificial-reality device may translate the interactions into mobile-application-compatible data that can be understood by the mobile application. The mobile-application-compatible data is then sent to the native application for processing.