PS5 April Update brings new storage options and social features

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PS5 April Update brings new storage options and social features

First major PS5 console update lets you store PS5 games on USB extended storage, share gameplay across PS5 and PS4 consoles, and more.

The first major system software update for the PS5 console is rolling out globally tomorrow, and it’s packed with new features and improvements. Our team is passionate about enhancing your experience on PlayStation in every possible way, so here’s a glimpse at what’s coming for PS5, PS4, and PlayStation App:

PS5 Storage Expansion and Management

  • Store PS5 Games on Compatible External USB Drives.* With this feature, you can now transfer your PS5 games to USB extended storage from your console’s internal storage. It’s a great way to extend the storage capabilities of your PS5 console, and you can seamlessly copy your PS5 games back to the console’s internal storage when you’re ready to play. It is faster to reinstall PS5 games from USB extended storage than to re-download or copy them from a disc.
  • Because PS5 games are designed to take advantage of the console’s ultra high-speed SSD, PS5 titles can’t be played from USB extended storage. PS5 titles also cannot be directly downloaded to USB extended storage. However, games that you transfer or copy back to internal storage will automatically update when applicable. In addition, you can select which game modes you want to install (such as campaign or multiplayer) for select titles that support the option.

As previously announced, the PS5 console will support storage expansion via M.2 drives in the future. We’re currently working on this feature and will keep you posted with any updates on PlayStation Blog.

New Social Features for PS4 and PS5 Consoles

  • Cross-generation Share Play. PS4 and PS5 players can now Share Play together while chatting in parties. This means PS5 console users can let their friends on PS4 consoles view their game screen, or even try out the PS5 games through Share Play, and vice versa. Options include the ability to share your screen with a friend, pass your controller virtually to a friend, or pass a second controller virtually to play co-op games together.
  • Request to Join Game Session. A selection of your friends’ joinable game sessions will now appear on both PS5 and PS4 consoles, allowing for more gameplay opportunities together. The “Request to Join” option also serves as a shortcut to sending a game invite, reducing the time it takes for you to get into games with friends. Through the Privacy Settings menu, you can modify who can interact with you through parties, games and messages.

Enhanced Control and Personalization Options for PS5 Consoles

  • Improved Game Base. The Game Base menu has been improved for quicker access to important content and features. You can now easily switch between Parties and Friends to start chatting with your existing parties or see what each of your online friends is up to. In addition, you can turn notifications on or off for each of the parties you’re in.

  • Disable Game Chat or Adjust Players’ Volume. You can now quickly disable in-game chat, which turns off your mic audio and the voice audio of other players. Additionally, you can easily adjust the individual voice chat volume of other players in the same chat so you don’t have to ask your friends to lower or increase their mic volume each time.
  • Game Update Pre-download. Once it’s enabled by developers, title updates for games will pre-download to your console if the “automatic updates” setting is enabled and your console is on or in rest mode. This will let you start playing the latest version of a game immediately after the update’s release.
  • Customize Game Library. With the ability to hide games from view, it’s now easier to find content and personalize your view of your game library.
  • Screen Zoom. You can now adjust the magnification of the screen to suit your preference from the Settings menu.
  • New Trophy Settings and Stats Screen. The level of trophies that results in automatic capture of a screenshot or video clip can now be customized — so you can now choose to only capture and save images/videos of moments when you earn higher-grade trophies, like Gold or Platinum. We’re also introducing a new player Trophy Stats screen, where you can check out the summary of your trophy level and status at a glance.

Image cropped to showcase new Trophy Stats screen

New Features for PlayStation App

We’re also introducing a myriad of new features for PlayStation App to make it easier than ever to connect with your console experience remotely. Recently, we introduced the ability to save products in a wishlist, get notifications when your friends are online, and change your console online status. In the coming weeks, we’ll be rolling out even more, including the ability to join a multiplayer session on PS5 from the app, manage your PS5 console storage, compare trophy collections with friends, and sort and filter products shown in the PlayStation Store. You can download PlayStation App for free from Google Play and the App Store.

We’re only scratching the surface of the many updates and improvements we’ve made across PS5, PS4, and PS App, so check them out and let us know what you think!

*For external USB drive compatibility requirements, visit: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/hardware/ps5-extended-storage/.

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668 Comments

  • Turning off the game chat isn’t viable. The biggest issue is not being able to change the voice output from the DualSense controller to the speakers. There needs to be an ability to swap audio from controller to another output. Also I need the M.2 Update.

  • Good features! Cant wait for a “FPS boost” feature :)

  • This is great, but now allow us to backup PS5 saves to USB as well. No reason we shouldn’t be able to do this when you allow us to backup PS4 saves Day 1 to USB.

  • Please let the trophies now display vertically and the description can be read without having to click into each trophy screen.

    • Exactly. I’m unsure you thought a horizontal view of trophies was a good idea when there are generally 35+ trophies to sift through

    • This! I can probably get used to the horizontal setup but having to click to see the entire description is such a hassle, like every trophy is hidden.

  • Great Update! Not sure if this update brings error fixes but overall very happy with the update. I am most excited about the USB storage, new parties and trophy features. THANKS!

  • Great news for storing ps5 games on an external drive. My bigger question though is have you fixed the standby mode stability? After crashing several times coming out of that mode early on I haven’t wanted to risk using it.

  • Any news on when the PS5 will support HDR 10+?

  • Why doesn’t PlayStation 5 have the whats new section in its OS? I really like that for the a PlayStation 4, Also please address the PlayStation 5 HDMI link to Bravia TVs it’s not working correctly, I had to turn mine off. Kept resetting my TV. Thanks!

  • Please add USB backup option for PS5 save games too.

  • Sony has no games on the PS5 that are even interesting to me.
    Sony took away the communities app I rather enjoyed.
    Sony continues to make the store worse.
    Sony has not sold me, in any way, to upgrade to PS5.

  • VRR please and thank you

  • This is absurd, and that is putting it kindly! What is going on, this is the worst update ever. Clearly, this wasnt ready for primetime. Not happy.

  • PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE SONY can I back-up my PS5 ‘game saves’ to USB like you could on the PS4/3. I don’t get why that isn’t possible now for??? If my PS5 dies then I will lose all my PS5 saves :-/ (+ I don’t want to pay for PS PLUS each year to so I can use the cloud save way) PLEASE do this for the next update. Apart from that, Excellent update :P

  • Can you make it to where the ps5 has an auto turn off after a set time of not being used like ps4 instead of only a rest mode option. I’d prefer for it to just turn off when I’m watching something to fall asleep to after 2 hours of me not using the PS5

  • 1. Where is an amazing PS Home social experience for PS5?

    2. Where are the 1st party RPGs? Which allow for far more depth and world building lore than your typical action adventure title.

    3. Where is the smart and major Square Enix acquisition to compete with your trillion dollar competitor for the long haul?

    Continue to be cheap and slow on innovative decisions and you will lose all of the market share you’ve gained I guarantee it. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apple became the companies they are today by continuing to make smart investments and acquisitions to grow their revenue and profit. Regardless of the cost you need to think smart and spend more now on a major acquisition to grow your lackluster portfolio of studios while also investing in your Gaikai servers. Be better.

  • Oh wow now we can get usb storage for games. That feature should had been out of the box ps4 had it

  • When can we turn off the gameplay recording notifications? As someone who is never going to utilize gameplay recording, it’s extremely distracting to see these messages pop up during and after every single cutscene, and even during some menu options. It literally takes up an 8th of my screen during a cutscene.

  • I have a request for an update.
    I want an option to lock the game language to a specific language.
    The problem? Well, I live in Portugal and many times I want to play in good old English, but since the game might have portuguese it locks the language in game to it, and the only way to change it is to go to definitions of the console and the change the language to English, but I want my console in my native language.
    Other way to see it is like, you can hear the game in English from Britain or English from US, in portuguese happens the same, and many times portuguese is from Brazil which is the worst, why? To many swears…
    Buttom line, an option to lock the game in a specific language without messing with the console language with want.

  • Nice work!

    Some quality of life updates I’d like to see:

    – Allow storage of Videos and Pictures (Media Gallery) on External USB storage. I have in excess of 100GB of PS5 storage taken, whilst i have a 6TB external disk doing very little. Please allow to transfer the videos, even if they need to be recorded first on the PS5 disk (shouldn’t be needed, but i can live with it, at least initially)
    – ShareFactory is quite usable, but it’s actually quite hard to close a project and go back to the main menu once you are editing a clip.

    Thanks!

  • Hey, I don’t know if it’s just me but can you guys fix a weird glitch that whenever I get an invite it says “can’t load data”, I usually restart my WiFi or my ps5 but sometimes I have to do it twice and it’s getting a little annoying

  • Please let us play our digital PS1+2 titles on PS4 and 5.

  • Hello, what about adding a support for local NAS/DLNA devices media playback? I am missing this hard, it was supported on PS4…

  • 1440p compatibility for gaming monitors when??

  • Sure would be nice if plugging in a headset did not kill audio to my capture card. Guess I’m playing co op games on last gen until you guys fix this

  • Exciting to start getting updates!

    Sony, will you please add support for 1440p monitors? A lot of players use monitors too! And it is available on launch on the xbox series x…why shouldn’t it be a standard for next gen consoles?

  • Some things are still just worse on PS5 than they were on PS4.

    Trimming a video clip for instance; you could actually see frames as you fast-forwarded to find what you were looking for. But on PS5, you’re flying blind unless you watch the whole thing. It’s so much more time-consuming.

    Also, hopefully this trophy list improvement makes it more like PS4. You used to be able to see a whole list with rarity, earned %, and a description at a glance. Now on PS5 you have to open each one individually one at a time to get more than 2 and a half words of even just the name of it.

    Not huge issues, but they just seem like a downgrade from what we had.

    • I hate the new trophy layout too.
      Also, grey out trophy icons with a pad lock on top rather than just having endless card after card of massive grey area and a generic locked trophy icon. Such a waste of space.
      here’s my theory, it’s a lot more comfortable to go up and down on menus than it is to go side to side so maybe in the future think about having the PlayStation overlay menu display top to bottom on the left side of the screen.

  • I love the option to be able to transfer PS5 games to an external hard drive while you guys figure out the SSD situation..I hope with future updates we can recieve some sort of Backwords Compatibility for PS1-PS3 gaming. I’d hate to see my digital games from the PS3 era be rendered useless.

  • Nice improvements.
    Really hope VRR is coming soon, also on the sony tv’s.
    Do not know if dolby vision for gaming is coming ? I hope so?
    Themes and the social feed (what’s going on) from ps4 is a must too.

  • Will this also fix the issue for game icons of games that were uninstalled that cannot be deleted off the home screen? (I have a couple showing for physical games that I own that I’ve uninstalled)

    • Redo your licences. I’ve had this problem since launch and it’s not going away. I redo my licences maybe once a week.

  • I can’t believe your not updating the store.
    There’s so much work that needs to be done to the PS5 GUI to get it back on par with the PS4 in terms of direct usability.
    This is the first update in months. Personally I’d just settle for it starting up with sound reliably without having to reboot it.

  • Good Start but did they say VRR was coming in next update a few month’s ago?

    • They better add Freesync or I’ll be seriously annoyed.
      a lot of TVs. HUGE amounts of them don’t support 2.1 but aren’t far away with full 2.0 features and freesync ultimate.

  • Hopefully we’ll soon have the function to access our game captures through the app to download share our screens/recorded clips through the app.

    • It would also be nice if the videos in the app would orientate to a landscape view when turning your phone.
      also imagine being able to zoom in screenshots with your fingers….just imagine.

  • This is a great update! But I really hope that they bring 1440p and VRR support soon

  • Is there a way to submit new suggestion for future updates? Tried on twitter but no response.
    Really hoping some previous features from the PS4 to make it back.

    One annoyance for me is taking consecutive screenshots. There’s no ability similar to PS4 where you can hide screenshot notifications resulting in the notification appearing in the next screenshot in quick succession. Please add this back!

    Adding back the double tap feature of the PS button would also be nice, like PS4! Allowing us to quickly navigate to the previous app we were using.
    Also like PS4, custom button assignments shortcut is missing from the Accessibility quick menu, which was of course present on PS4. On that, a feature to swap between long press and single press of the PS button would be nice.

  • Please allow us to turn off blocked scene notifications like we could on PS4. You get to the big emotional, impactful scene and suddenly boom, intrusive notification.

    99% of people don’t record and stream, but everyone is hit with this awful ‘feature’.

  • Yes that’s great to hear definitely I can’t wait but I have a question when are the PS5 are going to be restocked so I can get one I’ve been trying to look on all websites Target the PS PlayStation online I couldn’t find anything please let me know I’m ready to purchase

  • I purchased a WD SN850 SSD and looking forward to the update.
    Yes, they must admit they work very hot. I will connect a heatsink and a small fan to fix this problem. In order for the fan to get air from outside, I will have to cut the console cover in a rectangular shape. In addition, an adapter will be required to power the fan or I can power it via USB. I hope I don’t wait long for this delay.

    There is another thing that playstation fans like me are curious about. What is the write life of the console’s internal memory? Repeatedly deleting and installing games must be consuming the life of the internal memory. Many users are worried about this issue.

    Even if the M.2 SSD meets the standards, I doubt they will be as efficient as internal memory. It would be good for to inform us about this issue.

    I know there is a lot of hot air inside the console. Take off the caps and watch them cool to 10 degrees. Will there be updates for fan speed increase? I’m ready for this, I want more sound. More sound but cooler!

  • Excited for the updates!

    Any chance we could get Themes in the future? I’d also appreciate a reduction in the number of button presses needed to put the console to sleep/turn off.

    Thanks again!

  • Please let me turn off cards. It’s an extra step I have to go through before using the menu. I don’t use them. Give me the option, please.

    And let me use Remote Play on the Vita. It’s a very capable machine and matches the esthetic of THE PS5.

    Make the list of games and media longer across the top and in the switcher menu. It’s frustrating to go hit the PS button, have to skip a card, scroll to switcher, look for an application, find its not there, then have to hold PS button, find its not there in the horizontal upper menu, then have to scroll over and click all apps, and then select it.
    Let me pin the media applications and games I want to the switcher and the horizontal menu. Having to switch between media and games is an extra, silly step. Let me customize what I want to do, this machine can clearly handle that. Some of the UI decisions here are real head scratchers.

    Also allow for custom pop up menus when holding PS button like on PS4.

    Thank you.

  • I hope they fixed some issues with external storage as well. Have a 6TB drive with over 300 PS4 games on it, but it’s not exactly a stable experience. On multiple occasions, the PS5 got confused and behaved erratically with issues like only showing a subset of the games, being very slow to actually display the games (probably reconstructing the library), getting confused when you also do a backup to another external drive, etc…

  • Sony, can you please let us have a gifting option to gift people games/dlcs/items. You are the only company that doesn’t have a gifting option available for us. And can you bring the old party chat feature back? I’m tired of creating groups everytime I want to talk to my friends.

  • Screen Zoom. Cross-gen share play. USB storage for PS5 games. Improvement to game base and system level game invites. 👍🏽👍🏽

    PS5 finally moves out of public beta testing

  • Support the Vita!

  • I only used the PSapp (ps4) to get my screenshots to my phone and see friends photos. I can’t do that currently so the PSapp (ps5) is useless.

  • DualShock 4 controllers still nobbled for PS5 games? :( I mean, I guess the new Share Play is a (convoluted) option for that, but why not just allow it?

  • Nice improvement, but can we have many of the social features back that we had on ps4 to ps5?. Such as the newsfeed that had which trophies, screenshots, our friends have earned. We lost the ability to see what our friends were listening to on spotify, this is no longer in the profile. Our actual profile backgrounds are limited to our playstation game screenshots. We can no longer use our own from our phone galleries etc. There is no color options anymore for background theme. The text is very limited in characters in the about me section of our profiles. This is just a few things I can think of off the top of my head.
    The playstation app lost a lot of features as well. Can we please have the ability to Zoom a picture!, as it stands a person cannot.
    These are important improvements that were taking away, from the next gen console on psn.

  • “An issue between PS5 consoles and some Samsung TVs has left players unable to use both 4K HDR and 120Hz at the same time, but it sounds like a fix is coming from Sony.”
    “According to the post, Sony is aware of the issue as well. The community manager writes that Sony will “probably” put out an update in March that will resolve the problem. Until the update arrives, PS5 owners on affected Samsung TVs can either reduce the refresh rate to 60hz or disable HDR to keep playing without issues.”

    sony wake up!!!

  • Here are a few points that I don’t like about the PS5’s system software and that I would like to see improved in the future:

    – As with the PS4, only the last approx. 10 games played / installed are automatically checked for updates on the PS5. Any other installed games will not be updated automatically. In the case of the competition (Switch / Xbox), all installed games are always updated

    – If you want to check games manually for updates, this is only possible for the last 9 games that you can see in the menu, if you press the Options button in the library for a game, the menu item “Check for updates” is missing

    – The disk drive revs the disk to full speed once an hour (bug?)

    – Controller updates require a USB cable connection to the console

    – You cannot start controller updates manually, you have to wait 24 hours until you are asked again

    – The whole PS5 Home Menu / Quick Menu Structure looks like a step backwards in contrast to the PS4, since a number of functions are missing and it feels unwieldy / cumbersome in many places

    – you can’t create folders in the menu to sort your games like on the PS4

    – The friends list can only be seen in the quick menu, but no longer in the home menu

    – The quick menu is too small and often feels unwieldy

    – In the Home / Quick menu there is no longer a direct point to the trophies, you always have to take the detour via the profile

    – In the home menu there is no longer any possibility to switch off the console, only in the quick menu

    – There is no more activity feed for friends

    – Screenshots can only be shared / uploaded on Twitter

    – When receiving a trophy there is no longer the “pling” sound like on the PS3 / PS4

    – There is no real trophy tracker like on Xbox

    – The trophies are no longer displayed as a list, but only in confusing tiles

    – Displaying hidden trophies is much more cumbersome than on the PS4

    – Even the complete friends list is no longer a list, but rather confusing tiles

    – You cannot see the trophies of the PS5 games on the PS4 or my.playstation.com and the PS5 games are also not displayed in the profile

    – On the PS4 and PS5, I see a different number of games played in the profile, even if I remove the PS5 games that are not displayed on the PS4

    – Game collections e.g. trilogies with several trophy lists are shown in the profile as a single game, but on the PS4 you can see the achieved trophies of all 3 games in percent, on the PS5 you only see one of the 3 games and it is not let’s be clear which one of the 3 games is

    – Bonus content such as art books, soundtracks etc. are shown in the profile as a single game, on the PS4 you can see, for example, that you have played the soundtrack for TLoUPII, on the PS5 it looks in the profile as if you have played TLoUPII twice just with different playing time, in my case over 60h and under 1h, why this different display?

    – In the games you only see the DLCs that you can purchase in the store, but no longer the DLCs that you received through special editions or as a pre-order bonus

    – In the games you can no longer see which friends have played the game

    – There is no longer a change log (update history) for PS5 games, but there is for PS4 games on the PS5

    That the HDMI 2.1 features like “Variable Refresh Rate (VRR)” and “Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM)” are missing should be fixed as soon as possible!

    Above all, VRR is a real game changer (assuming an up-to-date TV).

    Digital Foundry mentions that in almost every video that the Xbox Series has an advantage here.

    It would also be nice if Sony worked on a feature similar to Microsoft’s “FPS Boost”.

    • Great clear list man. The whole design was rushed for sure! Going to be a good while until we get some update we’d want right away that’s especially missing from PS4..

    • I agree with most of the points here, and it’s a shame we have to wait 1 ~ 2 years (again) each generation for these features.

    • When I read that the xbox series got the same system software as the xbox one and the PS5 got a new, great, modern one, I smiled at Microsoft at first.

      But now I think Sony would have just taken everything from the PS4 and the Xbox still has all the functions and new features like VRR. Now I have to laugh at Sony. :-(

  • Where’s 1440 resolution at 120hz?

    What’s the internal nvme expansion slot for again?

  • What would be nice, is is we could transfer saves from PS4 to PS5 via USB.

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