Xbox Testing New Dashboard Feature

Xbox is working on a new dashboard feature that will enable users to combine dynamic backgrounds with static game art when scrolling through their games and apps on the dashboard. Currently, having static game art enabled as the background and hovering over games or apps that don't have game art attached will display the default Xbox background.

One of the cooler dashboard features that was introduced with the launch of the Xbox Series X and S were new backgrounds. The new consoles allow users to have game art of the currently selected title momentarily pop up as the background before they scroll to the next game and so on. Dynamic, motion-based backgrounds were also a big addition, and Xbox has released a ton of free ones over the years since the consoles' 2020 launch. First-party games like Halo Infinite, Hi-Fi Rush, Starfield, even big third-party titles like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, 2023's Dead Space remake, and Cyberpunk 2077 all had dynamic backgrounds come to Xbox gamers for free.

The Verge's Tom Warren revealed that Xbox has begun testing a new Xbox UI wrinkle that will allow gamers to use dynamic backgrounds in tandem with static game art in order to avoid having the default Xbox background pop up when having the latter option enabled. Warren demonstrated how this would work in a short clip underneath the tweet. Starting on the Xbox Support app with a dynamic background enabled and visible, Warren scrolled one tile right to Fallout 4, which prompted the title's game art, a suit of power armor in a garage, to replace the dynamic background before Warren continued right to the Xbox Media Hub, which caused the dynamic background to return. This will work with all types of Xbox's dynamic backgrounds.

It'll be interesting to know whether this feature will roll out on its own or if it'll come as part of a much larger Xbox UI update at some point down the road. One of the Xbox UI's biggest issues still remains: the abundance of home tiles used exclusively for