Here's What's Included In The Xbox October 2021 Update

So this will actually be an update to download? Not something that is done on there end?

@Snake_V5 should be a download. Check your systems under settings and the updates. Usually they update automatically too.

@Halucigens Okay.

dude update is availible now.... enjoy

Night mode is great! Can finally turn the light on the controller off!! Although it feels a bit strange using the controller with no light lol

The night mode I'm legit excited for and will be using nightly to help wind down from my day.

Can we have the option to remove it the the guide? The guide gets more cluttered with every update when all I need on it are messages, recent games, and achievement.

Nice for the night mode, really hoping that the Series S can get the 4K dashboard too

Being a fuss pot, would be nice if it was in HDR and HDR DOLBY VISION as well as, every little bit helps. Also will stop the switching of HDR on and off each time you go into a game.

Night mode sounds great.

It does look sharper now so it's a nice upgrade, also I've set my controller and console to dimmer settings, pretty nice little QOL upgrades.

Nice to be able to dim the light on the controller but 20% it is still too bright (and off is strange)

Great update! The 4K dashboard looks nicer and turning off the lights is something that I appreciate. @Dezzy70 That would be nice as well and November would be a good month to announce a new Elite Controller!

@Xiovanni For some reason, the update switched my screen settings to 1440p 120hz. I had to switch it back to 4k 60hz to enjoy the new 4k dash.

Honestly though, while a full 4K dashboard is definitely welcomed, this doesn't solve the more meaningful issue that has plagued the dashboard for many years.... HDR. It still doesn't include HDR like the PS5 one does, so you still get the momentary black screen every time HDR switches on and off. Not sure how that would have been so difficult to include, especially when Auto HDR for a lot of backwards compatible games is a system feature.

@John117 The Xbox One X|S also supported HDR and has used this dashboard for some years now.

Also, there isn’t really any risk for burn-in in modern OLEDs, and not everyone has an OLED.

I thought things looked sharper, cleaner — had no idea an install even happened while in sleep mode, lol.

Hope the 4K dashboard will be coming to series s. The PS4pro also has a snappy 4K menu, so this should be possible.

@KilloWertz because there’s no good way to do it. I have a killer Sony OLED tv and if I ‘force’ HDR on standard def stuff it just doesn’t look quite right. Also, if the HDR dash was was a thing it would have to change tv signals to play SDR stuff. Not everything is HDR or auto HDR so you’d have the same problem in reverse.

I’m pretty sure this is a fixed issue as part of the HDMI 2.1 spec is fast switching between TV modes.

@Scenes They mean HDR dashboard only if you have HDR on on settings, I think. That also turns on Auto HDR for standard games by default. It's not for beauty but to avoid the screen blinking.

@BlueOcean That's what I mean. If the dashboard is HDR won't it just have to blink when it goes into games that don't support HDR? Not every modern game supports HDR. So you're not eliminating the problem, just making it happen less often. Also, the 'blinking' is fixed as part of the HDMI 2.1 spec I believe. So will go away entirely as we all get new TVs.

@Scenes No, I have a LG C9 with four HDMI 2.1 ports and the blinking occurs when switching modes (going back to the dashboard). If you turn HDR on in your console settings, HDR is applied to all games by default, even original Xbox games are presented in Dolby Vision now because of the automatic conversion. Then you can turn it off for old games that don't look better with Auto HDR, e.g., old cartoonish games that look darker in HDR.

@John117 The dashboard, aside from the dynamic theme, is exactly the same as the Xbox One's. That's why I said for many years, because it has plagued the Xbox's dashboard ever since the Xbox One.

@Scenes It's on from the start on the PS5 since Sony has HDR along with 4K on their dashboard. If they can do it, there's definitely no reason an actual software company who has been making OS's for decades can't implement it too.

It's not like I'm going to stop using my Series X because of it. It's just that there's little excuse as to why it wasn't included in the 4K dashboard, instead continuing to have a black screen every time we go from a game to an app while playing a game and vise versa, closing a game, etc.