New Year, New Xbox One Features Coming Your Way

We’re excited to return in 2018 with new features that impact the way you access your games and Achievements, how you let your friends know whether you’re available to play, and much more. Over the next several weeks, Xbox Insiders will begin to see a variety of cool new features they can interact with and provide feedback on. Here’s a look forward at some of the excitement still to come:

• Starting today at 6 p.m. PST, Xbox Insiders enrolled in the Alpha ring will receive the latest Xbox One system update (1802.180105-1503). With this update, you’ll be able to use the “Next Achievements” feature in the Guide, which enables you to view and sort a cross-games list of upcoming Achievements. Easily see which Achievements you are closest to, and quickly launch the game to obtain them. Sort filters allow you to prioritize next Achievements by closest, most common, rarest, most common rare, and highest Gamerscore.
• Mini Game Hubs will soon be available right in the Guide. With this feature, you’ll be able to access great content for the games you’ve played recently from a Game Hub without ever having to leave the action. Mini Game Hubs provide an easy way to see friends who are currently playing, upcoming Achievements, Looking for Group posts, and more.
• Sometimes all you want to do is avoid all distractions and focus entirely on your game. We’ll be including a “Do not disturb” online status, which will suppress notifications and let your friends know that you’re not available for another game or activity right now.

• We’re tweaking the community feed to make it easier to view comments. You’ll soon be able to see a peek of the most recent comment on community posts while viewing the activity in full screen. Comments are also being rearranged to place those that are most recent at the top. You’ll also be able to see who has liked your comments.
• To address user feedback, we’re adding additional inactivity shutdown options to the Power mode & startup menu. In addition to shutting down the console after one or six hours of inactivity, you will be able to select options for two, three, four and five hours.
• Put your themes on a schedule! You’ll soon be able to switch between light and dark themes based on time of day.

Alongside the updates listed above, which will work their way naturally through the Xbox One Update Preview rings, a subset of users may also see additional experimental features. 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 make the work-in-progress content and features coming to Xbox even better.

Editor’s Note: Scheduled themes was added to the list of features on 1/9.