The Xbox One dashboard update makes everything faster and even more customisable

A new Xbox One update, which overhauls the Xbox One dashboard, has started going out to folks who’re enrolled on the alpha preview program, Microsoft has announced. This redesign brings a bunch of new features such as a revised and faster guide navigation, a redesigned community section, and the ability for players to customise their home page how they want using content blocks. They had me at faster.

As with previous dashboard updates, this one focuses on navigation speed and the removing of splash screens that slowed down the UI as you switched between different tabs on the guide. On first impressions it all looks less cluttered and confused. The switch to the new Fluent Design (which is a lighter take on the previous Metro design) has removed a lot of the unnecessary stuff that was previously pushed onto the home page and also sped things up considerably. 

When players boot the console up, they’ll be greeted by a simple and minimal home page which shows the most recently played games, hints and tips, and a couple of adverts. This page can be customised to each person’s preference using the new content blocks, which allows players to pin pretty much anything to their home page. If you only play a couple of games and watch Twitch or Netflix, you can pin them to your home page for easy access. If you pin a game, it’ll show an activity feed showing you when your friends are playing. However, if you don’t like clutter and prefer it to be as clean as possible, you can remove pretty much everything. 

The guide has also been altered, with the previously vertical menu icons now appearing horizontally.. This change seems more coherent with the rest of the dashboard layout, and the improved speed of the guide is a godsend. The update also teases a look at the new avatar design, but doesn’t give us any more information on these.

The last change this dashboard update brings is a redesigned community page. The new activity feed design will let players read comments in fullscreen mode. Everything else has had a bit of a sprucing up to make it more visually pleasant and much easier to navigate.

There’s no word on when the general public will get their hands on this update, other than a vague ‘later this year’. Microsoft has said this is just the start of some major updates arriving on the Xbox One this year.