Unfortunately, that’s all this screen allows: no folders, no manual sorting, it won’t even save your sort settings. If you exit this screen and return, it will be reset to Newer (why, Sony, why?). However, if you’re looking for a game you haven’t played in a while – or never – it might help you find it faster. You can also press Triangle from the home screen to go to the search button, which is useful.
Customize the Control Center
When you press the PlayStation 5 PS button, you’ll see the Control Center, which includes cards that act as shortcuts and current game information, as well as a set of quick menus at the bottom. You can access your notifications, friends, sound options and more.
If you find this menu full of options you never use — or if you want to enable some hidden ones — you can customize it to your liking. Highlight one of the shortcuts at the bottom of the screen and press the Driver Options button. You will see a list of all the icons that can live here. Some are permanent, but others can be removed and added to make the menu more applicable to your needs.
Oh, and additional tip: If you prefer the Control Center not to appear at all, you can hold down the PS button to return directly to the home screen.
Turn off background music and sound effects
I’ve always dug into the soothing background tones of modern video game consoles, but maybe some don’t. And the PS5 not only plays quiet music in the background, but plays different music depending on the game you highlight, which can be annoying.
Fortunately, you can completely turn off this music and the associated sound effects. Highlight the Cogwheel Settings at the top right of the Home screen, then go to Sound> Audio Out and scroll down to the bottom of the menu. You’ll see an option to turn off home screen music and sound effects, if you wish.
Refine the user interface with accessibility settings
While accessibility settings are designed with people with different abilities in mind, they can also provide useful customizations that you may have missed (such as disabling the touch-wake feature for deep dialing on iPhones) If you go to Settings> Accessibility , on the screen you will find some options that may interest you, such as customizing the way the text appears or changing the scrolling speed of the overflow text.
Disable pop-up notifications
Finally, while not specific to the Home screen, I recommend going to Settings> Notifications and customizing how and when pop-ups appear. Many notifications can be set to hide during videos and broadcasts, but this means that when you return to the home screen, you will often receive spam with lost notifications. You can completely turn off certain notifications or set them to appear for a shorter time, so they don’t stay on the screen, covering these important icons in the corner.
I wish I had more useful options and using the PS5 one next to the rest of the consoles makes the interface feel unfinished. Hopefully, as Sony releases more software updates for the machine, more of these useful sorting and customization features will spread over time, so you can make your console truly your own.
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