Imagine it or not, essentially the most interesting XBOX news these days hasn’t been about games in any respect, but in regards to the dashboard. After last month’s round of Insider color experiments, Microsoft is back with one other batch of personalization and quality-of-life tweaks, and starting today, Alpha Skip-Ahead XBOX Insiders can take them for a spin.
The headline addition for many gamers might be the expanded color options. You’ll give you the option to punch in a particular hex color code for precise theming, or use a brand new “match my gamerpic” option that pulls a color straight out of your profile picture. When you’ve landed on a shade, a preview shows the way it carries across the remaining of your console before you commit.
The XBOX Accessories app can be getting a small but useful change. It’s going to now display a picture of the particular controller you could have connected, whether that’s an ordinary or special edition XBOX Wireless Controller with a Share button, or an XBOX Elite Wireless Controller Series 2. It sounds minor, but when you’ve ever sat there remapping buttons and second-guessed whether you had the suitable controller chosen, this clears that up at a look.
Rounding out the update are two features geared toward keeping you informed. After your console updates, you may now pull up the newest release notes right from the highest of Home, and people notes have been fleshed out with more detail on recent features, changes, and major bug fixes. There’s also a brand new XBOX service status indicator that appears within the upper-right corner of the screen when there’s a confirmed issue, with a faucet taking you to a standing page. That last one is a genuinely nice idea, for the reason that usual routine of alt-tabbing to a third-party site or scrolling social media to work out if it’s you or them has at all times been a pain.
All of this ties into how Microsoft is gathering feedback as of late through XBOX Player Voice, the feedback hub it launched earlier this month. The features here will roll out to more Insiders over time before reaching everyone later down the road. If you ought to test them now and aren’t already in this system, you may join the XBOX Insider Program through the XBOX Insider Hub.