Hands-On Windows 194 transcript

Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.

Paul Thurrott [00:00:00]:
Coming up next on Hands on Windows, we're going to be looking at something I've been waiting for for a long time. Xbox mode podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twit. Hello everybody and welcome back to Hands on Windows. This is one I've been waiting to record for a long time. If you are a PC gamer like I am, Microsoft has big plans to improve Windows 11 throughout the course of the year, but also very specifically for gamers. Right. There's an Xbox console coming next year that's pretty much going to be a PC.

Paul Thurrott [00:00:39]:
There were rumors that Microsoft might be bringing Xbox console games to PC. They are bringing PC games to the Xbox, etc. So they announced as part of the Xbox rog ally gaming handhelds last fall something called the Full Screen Experience, which has since been renamed to Xbox Mode, and that it's coming to all Windows 11 PCs and it's available today or should be soon. It depends on the timing. For you, this is one of those CFR things, control feature release. It's a random feature, so you'll get it at some point. And the way to find this thing is to go into the Settings app and then gaming. And if you see an Xbox mode entry here you have it.

Paul Thurrott [00:01:27]:
By the way, game mode has been in Windows 11 since Windows 11 was a thing. Capital M and Game on mode and Game Mode and small and you know, Microsoft. But my expectation was that Xbox mode was going to replace game mode. But actually these things coexist. And so if you're familiar with game mode, you know that there's nothing to do here. This thing is on by default, it just happens. The idea is that you're playing a game and Windows will kind of turn things off in the background. It says it doesn't really do too too much, but it should show fewer notifications, it should give back end processes, lower priority, etc.

Paul Thurrott [00:02:03]:
This wasn't aggressive enough for gaming handhelds because these things tend to have much lower end processors compared to a typical desktop or even laptop gaming PC. So they came up with this, what was first called the first Full Screen experience, but is now called Xbox Mode. And this one, as I expected, has a few more options. The thing that's interesting about this is this has actually changed and the way you move in and out of Xbox Mode has changed compared to when this was just a beta feature. I think we might have looked at this some months ago, maybe even late last year, but it's actually changed quite a bit. So to use this you have to Turn this feature on, which I've done. This one is optional. I'm going to show you why I did this.

Paul Thurrott [00:02:50]:
But I've enabled this. This is not enabled by default. I don't actually need this, so I've not enabled that. The idea here is that Windows will much more aggressively turn off everything that's happening in the background than was the case with game mode. And then it will present this full screen experience that is controller friendly. It can completely be navigated with a controller. You don't have to use a keyboard and a mouse. So it's a lot like an Xbox console.

Paul Thurrott [00:03:16]:
Right. That full screen experience is really two parts to it. The first one is the Xbox app essentially becomes the shell. So you can choose between the Windows desktop and then this new Xbox mode, which is the Xbox app, essentially. And then you get the game bar, which is that thing that comes up on top of games when you hold in the, you know, the white button, the white Xbox button on a controller. And this runs. It's not really full screen mode because it's over the screen, but it runs in a new compact mode, which like Xbox mode itself is designed, you know, to be used with a controller. Okay.

Paul Thurrott [00:03:55]:
So when you enable this, as I've already done, you have to reboot, you come back and you just come to the desktop. It doesn't actually just go into Xbox mode. I kind of expected it to do that. There used to be an option in here called Choose Home App and you could choose between the Windows desktop and the Xbox mode. I think that is. Will probably always exist on gaming handhelds, but if you have a normal PC, you actually have to get in there in different ways. So what are those ways? Well, they're hidden. As you can see.

Paul Thurrott [00:04:24]:
There's no indication at all that works. There's a couple of ways to do it. So two of the more obvious ones is just launch the Xbox app, which I have here. And you can see there's a Xbox mode, but pretty, pretty prominent. You can also bring up the game bar, which as you can see here, is in a. In that compact mode. And there's a. Somewhere in here there's a.

Paul Thurrott [00:04:45]:
Probably in settings. Yeah, there's an Enter Xbox mode here, but get out of that. But the reason I checked that second option related to Task View, if you type Windows key plus tab, that brings up the Task view. And now the Task view has this additional thing here next to the virtual desktops for Xbox mode. So you can actually use this to get into Xbox mode as well. So there's different ways to do it. I will do it this way this time. And actually because it says this, switching to Xbox mode, I would normally turn off this reminder, but I wanted to make sure everyone could see this.

Paul Thurrott [00:05:25]:
It's, you know, like I said, fully control. I'm going to use the controller for everything here. Right. So this is reminding me, you know, you can get back, right. You can tap the Windows key. If you have that on your keyboard, you can. Most the Xbox Rog gaming handhelds will have a Windows key as well that will do the same thing. You can press and hold the Xbox button on the controller.

Paul Thurrott [00:05:49]:
Okay. So there's different ways to do that. And then in this interface, like I said, you navigate around with the controller, right? So I'm using the D pad on the controller to kind of navigate around. Now it doesn't make a lot of sense to. I'm not going to sit here and play a game obviously, but I did install Doom and do here because this is kind of a lightweight game. You know, comparatively speaking you can get an idea of what this kind of thing looks like. So despite the fact that it's lightweight game, it actually takes a lot of launch. But as it does this and it goes through all these screens, which many of you are probably familiar with again, I can bring up the game bar with the controller.

Paul Thurrott [00:06:26]:
I hit the, the Xbox button there. You can see here exit game or Xbox mode. Sorry, getting trouble with the new name there and access all the different things that are here and then you can add and remove the widgets that appear here, etc. So one of the things about compact mode with the game bar is that you only see one widget on screen at a time. In the normal mode you can see them all, you know, floating around. So here we're just going to have the one and then you just, you can, you know, get into one of these games. So I'm not going to do this but you know, you get the idea. Okay, so once we get back again, we can I just Windows key plus tab and this gives me the option now.

Paul Thurrott [00:07:11]:
So this is the, this is like the controller friendly version of Task View, right? So you can see the other apps that we're using obs to record the thing. I've got my show notes here, we're in a Zoom meeting, etc. So I can actually switch to applications from this if I want and then run those in full screen mode. Which by the way, kind of, kind of interesting, right? I don't know if there's one that makes sense here. Like Zoom Marketplace. Well, it's running in the other screen, so it doesn't make any sense at all. But this is interesting because Windows doesn't have a full screen mode really for apps like the Mac does, but now it does. And I'm not saying this is a great way to switch between apps and then, but it is in fact a way and it's a way to run apps exclusively in a full screen boat.

Paul Thurrott [00:07:55]:
So if you like that on the Mac like this might be something to look, look at just for apps. Right? I'm not going to do that, but that's kind of interesting. So you get this little pop up again. I would typically turn that off, but just wanting to show that. So now we go back to the desktop. It is as it was before, you know, the Xbox app is still here, as in, you know, it's an app and it's got all the normal controls. Whatever I have going on the other screen is still going, obviously. And so useful.

Paul Thurrott [00:08:27]:
Right. And so this is, this is interesting. I mean, obviously if you're a PC gamer and you use a keyboard and mouse, that still all works, but everything there is designed to work with a controller, which is actually how I do play games. So to me, this is actually kind of incredible. I, you know, I play games exclusively on the PC actually. And this is what I want. What I actually want is for this thing to boot into this thing like it used to during the beta. And I know or I suspect that that's a feature.

Paul Thurrott [00:09:00]:
So like I said on the handheld gaming devices, but I'd like that on the PC, but I'm not aware of a way to do that. But it's easy enough and I don't know, let me press and hold on that. Yeah, so you can press and hold. I just pressed and held the controller, the Xbox button on the controller and it did bring up this new version of the task view. Right. Because let me see if I can't select the thing. So I could go in this way, I guess so it's not, it's not horrible. It's, you know, a quick thing.

Paul Thurrott [00:09:29]:
But obviously when you're playing games, you want as little going on as possible and this is a pretty good way to get there. So super excited that this finally happened. A couple of small things. Like I said, I kind of wish they would think about changing, but much better than the situation before. So really nice to have this. And like I said, this isn't stable. You should be able to get us, I think by the time you see this video, it should just be everywhere and so you should be able to get it automatically. So there you go.

Paul Thurrott [00:09:59]:
Hopefully you found this useful in this case entertaining because it's games. We will have a new episode of Hands on Windows every Thursday. You can find out more at TWiT TV. HRW. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you especially to our club TWIT members. We love you.