After powering on the Xbox One, the first thing players will notice is the completely reworked Home screen. With the update, users get to decide what they see when they first power on. Using a design system called Microsoft Fluent Design, the dashboard has been updated to focus on speed and expression. From favorite games to best friends, they can all be added to the home screen. This creates blocks of content than can be moved around or deleted altogether. That way, it always matched a player’s current interests or habits.
By putting Home, Social, and My Games and Apps into one dashboard, the long splash screens between the pages becomes nonexistent. This speeds everything up, making it fast and easy to get to the fun stuff.
Additionally, the new tab flyouts help speed things up in the Xbox One Insider update. These allow players to quickly jump between apps, join friends, broadcast, and more. Signing in, achievements, multiplayer, people, home and recent, messages, broadcasts and captures, and a new action center have their own tab.
For those who enjoy connecting with friends and clubs, connecting with the community is better than ever. The community section now shows more content at a glance. Looking at items in the activity feed brings them into a full-screen view. Even the comments window can be expanded to fill the screen.
The Xbox One is not the only one getting updated. On Windows 10, the Game Bar is getting even better. Switching a PC to Game Mode is as easy as clicking a switch directly in the Game Bar. Additionally, broadcasting with Mixer through the bar will allow users to make more choices about the audio. Options include game-only audio, or system-wide audio. For those with connectivity issues, a new Xbox Live Network Troubleshooting option in the Settings menu of Windows 10 allows users to track down the source of the issue.
This is just the beginning of several major updates coming later this year. Check back in the coming months for details on later additions.
