New Home experience now available for Xbox consoles

Xbox Insiders have been busy testing the enhanced new Xbox Home experience for some time now, and now the rest of the community can get their hands on the update beginning today.

As detailed over on the Xbox Wire blog, the new Xbox Home experience, which is rolling out to all Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S consoles, is primarily centered around personalization and discovery. Players can more easily organize and get to their game library, and jump back into games they play most, and keep an eye on what friends are doing as well.

See the details from the Xbox Wire, and check out some of the new features in action too.

Starting today, a new Home experience is rolling out to all Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One consoles. This update is designed from player feedback and makes it easier to discover new games, rediscover games you already love, connect with communities, and create a more personalized experience.

We’re excited to share more about the journey that led us here, and what you can expect with this new update.

Your new Xbox Home

1. Makes it easy to go to your Library, the Microsoft Store, Xbox Game Pass, Search, and Settings at the very top of your Home by introducing a quick access menu.
2. Creates more space for your personalized background by simplifying the layout and putting the games you recently played and other content and apps towards the bottom of the screen.
3. Adds an option to change your background to match the game you are highlighting in the recently played list.
4. Improves game discovery by introducing lists of games curated and personalized for you.
5. Allows you to customize your experience by pinning your favorite games, curated groups, and system groups like Quick Resume to Home.
6. Helps you find what’s going on in your community through the updated Friends & Community Updates row.
7. Shows you what media apps and content are available to you via a Watch & Listen spotlight and list of entertainment apps

The journey to update Home

Improving the Home Experience has been truly a Team Xbox effort —from engineers to designers to researchers and many more. We started by investing in infrastructure that would allow us to try different layouts of the page with different content for different situations and customers. We then evaluated many different elements of the design process including what people interact with in the experience, how easy it is for people to complete the action they want to take, and how satisfied they are with the overall experience. Once we had a version that was ready to share, we started to roll it out to our Xbox Insiders.

When we first showed Xbox Insiders what we were working on we heard your feedback clearly – you wanted more room to show off custom backgrounds or game art, quicker navigation options, and more personalization. Over the last 8 months since initial release, we’ve implemented changes to meet those requests and have a new Home that feels fresh, puts the focus on your games and apps, and creates space for beautiful backgrounds.

How to try the new Home UI on your Xbox
We’re currently rolling the new Home experience out to a subset of all Xbox consoles. This means that some customers will need to wait a few weeks to get their hands on it. Rest assured over the next few weeks, it’s coming to a console near you! If you’re seeing the new Home on your console and you want to customize it to your liking, our guide has you covered.

Thank you for all your feedback, and your patience as we built your new Xbox Home. We look forward to hearing what you think!