Xbox One August 2020 update brings new Guide and Activity Feed features
The Xbox One August 2020 up has arrived, and it's bringing a refined Xbox Guide along with it. What we're seeing today is actually the next step in a multi-month process for Microsoft, which is attempting to make the "Xbox Experience" a unified one across different devices – across the Xbox One, a new Xbox app that will be launching in beta soon, and even eventually Xbox Series X.
Microsoft started down this path in May of this year with various improvements to the Xbox One guide, and today we're seeing even more. The company detailed all of these new features over on Xbox Wire, and started off by describing the Guide's new landing page. Microsoft says that it the Guide has been updated to be easier to read and to show the most recent things users were doing. Users can even customize the Guide to some extent, as they can change the order that tabs appear.
Along the bottom of the Guide, you'll find a series of icons, including one for the Guide's new notifications inbox. Your notifications will be collected here, whether those are game or group invites, installation notices, or notifications about new followers you may have received. Microsoft says that the notifications inbox will be updated in real time across all of your Xbox logins, which is where it mentioned the Xbox app that will soon launch in beta.
New users will see additional tips and tricks in the Guide as well, but perhaps the biggest change this update is bringing is individual volume controls for each member of your party; now, if someone in your group is being too loud, you won't need to turn everyone down just for some relief from that one noisy person.
In addition to these changes to the Guide, Microsoft has rolled out a new Activity Feed where all of the posts are the size and the Game, People and Community Content Blocks have been improved.
Finally, Microsoft has revealed some features that will be arriving for Xbox Insiders soon. These new features are mostly centered around unifying the Xbox look across all platforms, and Xbox Insiders will soon see a visual update to the Xbox One that will match the look of Xbox on PC and mobile devices. Those Insiders will also be able to apply profile themes across Xbox One and PC, and finally, they'll get to sign in on multiple devices all at once – just in time for Project xCloud's official launch.
Xbox One users can look for these Guide and Activity Feed improvements to land today, while Xbox Insiders will see these new profile features arrive at some point in the next week.