1. Take Advantage of Search

With your own game library, PlayStation Plus freebies, PlayStation Now games, and more, it can become a hassle to scroll through all your games and find what you're looking for. That's why you should use the search feature of your PS5 to cut down on wasted time scrolling through menus.

To open search, press Triangle while on your PS5's home screen to jump right to its icon, then press X. From here, you can look for games, apps, media, and other PSN players. Use the tabs at the top to filter.

Since the PS5 only shows a few of your recently played games on the home screen, this is the best way to find any game you haven't opened in some time, or check any title on the PS Store.

2. Manage Individual Game Content to Save Space

The PS5's SSD is only 825GB, and not all of that is usable. With how large games are nowadays, you'll probably fill up your storage space in no time. You can head to Settings > Storage > Console Storage to manage your storage and free it up by uninstalling games, deleting captures, and similar.

But under the Games and Apps section, there's one way to delete unused data that you might not know about. With certain games, your PS5 actually installs each part separately. You'll see a Pencil icon next to games that support this function.

For example, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has each of its three main modes as separate downloads. So if you finished the campaign and don't plan to play it again, you can delete that and regain a chunk of space. Meanwhile, the parts you still play remain on your system as normal.

This is a great way to keep exactly what you want on your system, without wasting space for an entire game just because you like one part of it.


1. Explore your privacy settings

During the initial PS5 setup you'll be asked to select from a series of four different privacy settings with names like "Social and Open" or "Solo and Focused." It's essentially letting you control your online profile and what others can see.

But those settings can be broken down further within those categories, giving you complete control over whether you'll show up in search results, or who can add you as a friend, for example.

These settings can be found under the Users and Accounts tab in settings.

2. Choose your power settings

The PS5 gives you the ability to better control how much power your PS5 is pulling, mostly when you put it into rest mode. As with the privacy settings, you'll be able to choose between profiles during setup, with presets that can be broken down further if you feel like diving deeper. Those presets determine how long it takes for your PS5 to power down when idle and also whether or not the console will automatically download updates -- useful if you want to avoid the dreaded system update when you want to play something online.


Use the stand

Let’s get this one out of the way first: Always use the stand. It doesn’t matter if you have the normal PS5 or the digital edition or if you’re standing the PS5 up or laying it on its side — you need to use the stand.

This is particularly important if you have your PS5 in its vertical orientation. You can, technically, stand up the PS5 without the stand, but that puts all of the pressure on the clamshell plates surrounding the console, which not only makes your console more susceptible to falls but could break your faceplates.

Get to know the DualSense

The DualSense controller is really remarkable, and there’s no game that showcases it better right now than Astro’s Playroom. Even among Demon’s Souls and Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Astro’s Playroom is one of the best PS5 games. We recommend playing the first hour or so of the game, at least. Not only is it an excellent 3D platformer, but it’ll give you a chance to experience the DualSense’s haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, and built-in microphone.

It sounds gimmicky, but the DualSense is a game-changer, and it’s best showcased with Astro’s Playroom.

Once you’ve seen what the controller has to offer, head to the Settings menu and follow Accessories > Controllers. Here, you can set how loud the internal speaker is, the strength of vibration, and more.

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