Poll: Are You Using the PS5's New Welcome Hub?

I’m using it all the time, but only to check my storage and controller battery life, so not sure if that should even count as “using it”, but I am.😁

Look at controller battery and if I’ve enough room on the PS5 to buy more games but that takes seconds to see so it’s ok I suppose as don’t have to repeatedly press buttons to look for the info.

I really like that I can put my captures there and go through 10 random ones every so often, picking one to be the new background of the hub. It's reminding me of so many games and fun moments in them. I think I've got like 7000+ screenshots

For sure it’s there, but I can’t say I am really “using” it. It’s just the new UI right?

Set it up today as it goes… went purely social, as I missed the old social-feed from ps4.

Turn on PS5. Play current game.

I'm not sure what using it consists of really. I picked the single player preset and it shows me my trophy list, controller battery level and storage when my PS5 turns on. I also changed the background to something with a darker theme. It's still better than the pile of streamer garbage it replaced even if I don't really use it.

I mean…it’s there. I see it. I mostly just use it to quickly check my hard drive space and DualShock battery.

I’m using it to check battery level. The only other widget on there is the trophies, but that’s not very useful.

The only thing I ever use it for is to check my battery level, other than that I basically never use it. Why couldn't we have gotten themes for the entire UI?

Really don't care for any of it. It's not like I need to know how much storage I have free when I boot up the console, I really don't like trophies, and the controller notifies you when it's running out of juice (and the indicator is on the quick menu anyways).

Feels like a solution looking for a problem.

It’s there, it just lacks any sort of use. You have to actively go into it which defeats the purpose of quick access.

I’m in the camp that finds it rather pointless honestly and suspect it’s an answer to the request for themes or backgrounds. The stuff that’s on the page wasn’t necessarily inconvenient to access before.

I would use it, but so far nothing in Hungary. I have no idea what’s so complicated about releasing such a small feature on a global level...

Same as a few others - battery & storage (and set background to 1 of my photos (captures)).

@rjejr That’s exactly how my brother uses it! I think it’s super convenient.

It's a quick way to access the media gallery and check my battery. This has been a good update for me

Has anyone else noted on the Storage widget for Internal SSD, once expanded to include detail - on mine the widgets 'Other' storage category has a different gb value than if i go to the main storage page in the options menu (the original from launch) - the widget shows an amount approx 1.5 times the main page if I remember correctly.

@ShogunRok - tagged you in, in case having written the article, this is of any interest.

I think it's actually a pretty nice addition.

Don't have it in Canada yet...at least as of last night.

@Rich33 Just checked this after seeing your comment and mine's also showing a greater amount for 'Other' on the widget.

Maybe it's more of an approximation compared to checking manually? Weird!

Surprisingly more useful than I thought it would be.

Yeah i've been playing around with it. My favourite feature is it shows you your storage space as well as giving you quick access to it, real QoL feature for me that is.

It's pretty great, all around. The only thing I wish is the ability to have two different storage tiles visible (one for each SSD) at a glance without needing to tab through them.

I don’t really see the point?

I know my battery life by pressing the ps button.

But I customised it to storage, battery life and new to plus. Keep it minimum as possible

As far as I can tell it was not on my console yet when I played today.

Excited to see Phasmophobia is officially coming to PS5 w/ PSVR2 support in a couple of weeks. Been waiting a long time.

I would, but it's not in Ireland yet.

It's not even here yet.

Last I checked (last night) it wasn't enabled up here in Canada, which is slightly amusing due to our proximity to the US. They get it and even the Brits do before it reaches Canada!

I love being able to see my head phone and control battery charge levels at a glance, and being able to position that widget so it’s first. That’s my primary use case. Accessing storage via its widget is also more convenient than menu hopping.

I like it. I have battery and storage also news, ps store and my wishlist. I'm a single player gamer so I don't use all the social stuff 👍

@ShogunRok
Yeah, certainly could be - the whole 'other' category is a bit weird to be honest!
Thank you though - glad its not just me.

You can't boot the PS5 without landing on it first. So yeah. Everybody is "using" it by default.

@LavenderShroud Apparently that's how half the people on here are using it as well, and the other half don' have it yet. 😂

Great use of Sony's time. 🙄

I actually quite like it, would be good to just have it appear when on the tile though instead of clicking into it.

I still really miss the way Vita did things. It was always a pleasant surprise receiving a comment from a friend for something I had accomplished. Felt a lot more like you were playing with a community rather than everyone in their own little bubbles.

What a load of garbage!

All these widgets and nonsense for stuff you can already access, usually with one or tap of a button at any time, even during a game, seem redundant. How stupid do you have to be to keep checking or needing to know how much storage you have? Nearly all the consoles out there hold maybe 4-5 AAA games... You should know what's on your console!

The most disappointing thing about the welcome page other than it really offering you what's already available to you, is the background is only visible when you're on the hub! What the actual ****, c'mon man give me a break! I hate it with a passion, that I can't have my own background on the PS5 ( static no matter what game I'm trying to deicde to play ) or at least have a theme! It's stupid in this day and age to have a limited customisable dashboard on a console where I spend a lot of time and money. No wonder why, when I play my PC I'm happier loading up and seeing all the artwork displayed in all it's glory across 3 screens! Sony are so far behind! Every time I flick through the games I already have downloaded, when I want to choose the game to play. Other than some random stuff I never read with the background display image being the cover of the game selected, are the DLC's at the bottom. If that's Sony's only purpose, to entice us to buy more DLC's through this method of advertising, well I have news for them! I'm only ever going to buy DLC's for the games I enjoy playing, no matter how much advertising you stick in my face! I nearly always buy the hard disc ( usually limited or collectors editions ), buy all of the DLC's and anything else that takes my fancy for the game I'm playing, it has absolutely nothing to do with advertising! I know what I'm looking for and what type of games I like to play and have done so, since the 80s! This welcome hub/page is the biggest waste of time, they could have paid me to do a better job! These devs and idiots that have meetings and approve the ideas of the devs, actually get paid a shed load and for what? WHAT A JOKE!!!!

Give me static backgrounds, the ability to have themes and a proper web browser, stick your advertising and I'll find my trophies, I'll manage the space on my hard drive, I'll remember what friends are online and what games they're playing and any other stats or info the way I've be doing for years!! Deal?!?!

Yes I've been using it to remind me how good the PS4's UI was

I couldn't care less, had my attention not been brought to it I would likely not have noticed that it had even changed.

Love the new hub. Major improvement! Now we only need the ability to permanently delete games off our trophy lists with partially completed trophy percentages (delete, not merely ‘hide’). Since there is no standardization industry wide as to what is acceptable trophy criteria and what is heinously offensive, we need the option to eradicate a partially completed game from our lists. I have passed on spending literally thousands of dollars on various games due to the devs forcing stupid or otherwise obscenely ridiculous trophy requirements. The option to wipe a game off our lists, no matter what % complete the trophies are, would instantly alleviate this issue.

Also, PS3 let us alphabetize the list. Why in the world would they remove this fantastic option and force a strictly worse ‘Last game you earned a trophy in gets bumped to the top of the list’ method? Instead of a neat, clean, alphabetized list it’s now a garbled mess.

It's pointless for me. These kinds of stats will never work for my home because the kids use my profile to play their games and I use the Portal so much (it doesn't accurately reflect how much time you've put into a game).

i like being able to see what games my friends have been playing like the ps4 days

One thing I always hated about companies and their software used for hardware we pay for is that we are beholden to them always changing it. I hate being shown “news” and adverts when I boot up my consoles. I miss the PS3 interface because that only appeared when one when to the PlayStation store. Same for the Xbox 360. And in a store one will see adverts even in real life. In the internet of everything era, each passing day the world further creeps into one’s life. Pretty soon newer cars with giant iPads will be having adverts to to further capture our data and be invasive. I digress I know.

Wish I had this tab but still not available in Australia yet 🥲

How can I change the size of a widget?

@MetaMan it's not about convenience now, it's about exposure, what it can do to keep the live service ADS whale gamer going to keep on spending and so on, I can't say too much on here but I agree with most stuff you have said, I looked at it and said huh, it has some additional things that are ok but I prefer to press the home button and anything that I need is already there, I'm not going to do additional things to get the same result but I wouldn't be surprised if this welcome screen replaced the home screen sooner or later?

I don’t know why they don’t make it like the PS4 background options were. I loved being able to set my own themes and wallpapers, some of them dynamic or static. I had. A HUGE collection and I feel PS5’s customization options in comparison are very drab.

@Fritz167 How can I change the size of a widget?

Scroll down the list of widgets and choose right bumper or left bumper on the controller, it tells you at the bottom left of the screen. It's more like an expand.

4 years on and STILL the PS5's UI is a a sack of garbage compared to the PS4.

Why, Fony, why? Oh, it's so you can advertise more crap on the Store. It's all about the (USA) $$$$s.

No because I don't have it on mine yet,
But by the sounds of things I don't want it...

Personally I find it a bit pointless. Can it be removed?

I find it useful for checking my storage, controller battery and Wishlist without the additional clicks. The backgrounds are nice too.

@JalapenoSpiceLife it's as much a waste of time as the Portal, who in hells hot water wanted that? For crying out loud, you have to be in the same house with your console switched on pmsl... Just more gimmicky garbage that people don't need and the don't get me started on the PS5 Pro... lol The PS5 is already an awesome bit of kit, the Pro really isn't needed. I miss not being able to see Cheryl Tweedy back before she had way too much surgery sprawled across my screen when I loaded up the PS5 or The King Of Fighters theme for a nice old fashioned bit of titillation, heck sometimes I used to be more sophisticated and had awesome shots of the Milky Way or a nebula and the like. That web browser was bloody handy too! ( even though you can use the exploit by putting a web link in a message and using that to get a secret browser that doesn't really work, on the PS5 ) The themes were fun and made you feel that you had control over customising something you've paid hundreds for, thousands by the time you've counted up games, peripherals, DLCs, Vbucks, and so on.. Sometimes people don't learn from history and what seems to be new isn't the direction people want to go in.

I would have bought the portal had you been able to hotspot from your phone or hotel wifi. Remote Play is already available, so another redundant piece of kit that's more limited.

I would be blown away if I could have had my own static background for my dashboard and some cool themes, maybe one from the Last Of Us would be cool!

Being able to connect to Party Chat via your phone when you're out and about was a nice touch but something Xbox users had long before PlayStation users.

Our library of games pales in comparison to Xbox's library and for way less money.

What would be bloody nice is to have the ability to have a filter that selects multiplayer games when browsing the library in the PS store! How that hasn't ever been option is beyond me...

Anyways, it's that time ( 10:38 am ) to get on RDR2 online and take revenge on those bucks that headbut me while I'm strolling The Heartlands. Hopefully Light No Fire will come out soon!!

Not out here yet, but I'll probably just use it for battery and storage

I set it up yesterday............. Then realised it was a waste of time 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I had the playstation store and PS+ game, trophy's and storage widgets.
then realised the icon directly left are the PlayStation store and PS+, storage doesn't really matter because I bought a 3TB HDD and I always have room for games

@MetaMan the gist of it is, that, Sony are in control of our consoles, we are not the big puppets all the way up to the top, most hardware they release is a doorstep without their services which you have to pay for anyways, a lot of things that Sony do doesn't make sense but here we are anyways 😕😕

I haven't set it up yet as I have been travelling for work but I will dig into it tonight just for the friends feed, hoping it to be a bit like on the PS4 where we can like games and trophies that friends get etc..
Don't really get why you would want widget for battery life, it literally flashes up with battery life for your controller when you boot the console or just press the PS button on the controller during a game, maybe people turn off the notifications off or something as lots of people seem to be using it.

Not for me, I had a quick look and didn't think that there was anything on it that would improve my experience of turning a console on and going into the game I wanna play.

Pointless really.

It should be optional, so that those of us who don't want it can disable it.
Unnecessary clutter.

I'm happy i can customise something. Feels like its my own now. Got my stank on it.
I like looking through each window quickly as well

Yeah, ditto.

Quite liking to be honest. I like how you can have a moving image now.
It's not a true 'theme' though as if you move away from the home screen it goes away.
I've added just a few things and taken the rest off.

folders would be more usefull

Should be optional. I don't need it.

I like this new option, it makes it a bit easier to use, very fast and slick. Sony have managed to make a very nice system interface I think. Runs so fast too.

I've cleared most of it off. With the exception of the Store card, everything else that remains is easily accessible from the hotbar. Seems like a waste of time and processing power. Another shining example of how far off the mark Sony are.

Don't have it yet in Ireland.
Would prefer the option to have an overall colour theme chooser - the dark grey is truly awful.
Would also prefer to have the PS4 version of folders.