New Xbox One Features Rolling Out to Insiders Ahead of the February Update

As we enter a new year, the Xbox team has been hard at work conceptualizing and testing new features based on your valuable feedback. Starting last week, Xbox Insiders in the Alpha Skip-Ahead and Alpha rings began to see a few new features we’ve been working on light up across their Xbox One consoles, with additional experiences set to roll out over this week to all our Insiders. Here’s a rundown on what’s new in the 2002 update:

Simplified Home Update for All Insiders

With the 2002 update we are rolling out the new, streamlined
Xbox One Home interface for all Xbox Insiders ahead of its full public
release next month! Your feedback since beginning testing of these Home improvements
has proven invaluable to building an experience that feels more responsive,
keeps your favorite content front and center, and gets you into your gaming
experiences faster than ever. With the new Home experience, we’ve removed the
Twists from the top in favor of dedicated rows for Xbox Game Pass, Mixer, Xbox
Community, and Microsoft Store with the added flexibility to add or remove rows
for a customized experience.

Games Collection

My Games & Apps UI Update

With the 2002 update, we’re bringing you more ways to keep My
Games & Apps organized! As we recently disclosed, you will now find content
grouping for easier navigation and access to your games and apps, as well
as labels for trials and demos, and a streamlined settings experience to
simplify how you interact with your gaming collection. Keep your eye out for
a full survey about these changes! In the meantime, we can’t wait to hear
what you think.

Image Support in Conversations

With 2002, we’re enabling the ability for
you to view images and animated GIFs in messaging conversations with your Xbox
Live friends on console, with the ability to also view content in Message
Requests based on your message safety settings. Now, images sent from the Xbox
mobile app on iOS or Android or the new Xbox (Beta)
App for Windows 10 PC
will also display
on your console, with the added ability to view the content in full-screen on
Xbox One.

View and Install Individual Games Bundled
Through
Xbox Game Pass

Xbox Game Pass members: we’re giving you additional control over which content to install when downloading and playing Xbox Game Pass titles that are part of a larger bundle listing, such as Shenmue I & II. With this update, you will now see an “In this bundle” overview from the install dialog, as well as the option to select which individual title to download and launch.

Image support UI

Choose a Preferred Location for Notifications

You can now decide where you want
notifications to appear on your screen by going to Settings -> Preferences
-> Notifications and clicking on “Default notification position.”
This will bring up a menu that lets you choose a preferred spot from one of six
locations on your screen, letting you move them out of the way if they end up
blocking something in games or apps. While your preferred location will become
the new default, note that certain games may change this during gameplay for
the best user experience.

Even More Mixer Viewing Improvements

Thanks to your feedback, we’ve made a
number of changes to improve your Mixer viewing experience on Xbox One!
Firstly, you now have the option to switch your chat mode to ‘classic chat,’
which displays chat messages in their own dedicated space beside the stream
video. Secondly, you can now manually select the video resolution at which you
want to watch content based on your preference. Lastly, you can now see more
information about streamers you’re interested in, browse their VODs and Clips
to watch, and host their channel on your own, making it easier to support your
favorite streamers and keep up to date with all of their content.

Mixer viewing improvements
Classic chat mode displays messages in a dedicated chat area next to the video.
Mixer viewing improvements v2
Mixer viewers can now browse through a streamer’s VODs and clips to watch, as well as host their channel.

More Storage Management Suggestions

With the existing Storage Management feature, when you run
out of space your Xbox One makes space-freeing suggestions for you by
organizing and displaying which games, apps, and other content is taking up the
most room on your hard drive. In 2002, we are introducing a “Move” option for
users with external storage attached to their console, giving you the choice to
either move or remove items to free up the needed space as desired.

We’re always working to improve the Xbox experience, and a
subset of users may also see additional experimental features that are not
listed here.  These features are only enabled for a portion of the Xbox
Insider audience to gauge interest and collect feedback. Your participation in
the Xbox Insider Program helps us improve the work-in-progress content and
features coming to Xbox One.

Thank you to
all Xbox Insiders who are actively helping to shape the Xbox experience. These
2002 updates are possible due to the valuable feedback we receive as part of
the program. If you’d like to help create the future of Xbox and get access to early
features, download the Xbox Insider Hub on your Xbox One or Windows 10 PC today. You may also visit
the Xbox Insider Blog for the latest
release notes or join the Xbox Insiders subreddit to submit feedback and join the
discussion. We host a weekly refreshed thread (Xbox
Requests
) for all gaming ideas and feature requests. Let us know what
you would like to see!

Related:
Xbox Insider Release Notes – Beta Ring (2002.200128-2000)
Xbox Insider Release Notes – Alpha Ring (2002.200128-2000)
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Source: Xbox Blog