PS5 is saying goodbye to its US-only Explore tab and hello to the 'welcome hub,' a customizable home screen addition that'll soon roll out worldwide

Sony PS5 close up — (Image credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Sony has announced a new PS5 system update that adds several new features, including one that allows you to customize part of your home screen.

As part of a phased release starting with "select users in the US" today, the PS5 is introducing the new 'welcome hub' to its home screen. This hub is replacing the US-only Explore tab, and will allow you to choose from a selection of background designs (or one of your in-game screenshots), and personalize things further with a range of widgets that can be arranged, expanded, and shrunk to your liking. These widgets sound pretty handy, as they include things like your total number of trophies, online friends, and controller battery levels. Overall, it sounds like a pretty neat way to make your PS5 feel more like your own.

While the welcome hub is coming to the US first, it'll also arrive in "Japan, followed by select countries in Europe, and finally releasing worldwide" over the coming weeks according to an accompanying PlayStation Blog post, so it's nice to know it won't be region-limited like its predecessor. Also seeing a phased release in the next few weeks is the ability to share party voice chat links to social media and messaging apps, to hang out with players even if they're not registered as a friend on your PSN account.

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As for what's available for everyone in the update today, we can all say hello to a selection of features that were previously trialed in the PS5 beta program. From now on, everyone can personalize a 3D audio profile to use with earbuds and headphones, in order to tailor sound to better match "your hearing characteristics." This could help boost immersion, and potentially allow you to better sense where sounds are coming from in games.

Also out now is an option to choose which users signed in to your PS5 are permitted to use Remote Play, and for anyone with a newer, Slim PS5 model, adaptive charging is available, so you can adjust the amount of time that your controllers are charged for when you leave your console in rest mode. Adaptive Charging will also be available on the PS5 Pro when it launches in November, if you're planning on making the jump to Sony's next souped-up console.

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