Don’t get me wrong: I love my PS4. But good God, that console has some antiquated design. And that’s most evident in the way the menus are constructed. The Share screen pulls you out of gameplay. Transitions are slow. And finding your favourite games is a pain.
Some of those quirks are finally being fixed.
In a post on the PlayStation Blog this morning, Sony outlined some of the upcoming changes in the 4.00 update for the PS4. It’s a visual overhaul of the main UI, with some general refinement, new icons, new backgrounds and a general revised look.
But one of the biggest updates is the overhaul of the PS and Share menus. Rather than being a delayed transition to a full-screen window, the menus now appear as a side tab on the left-hand side of the screen. It’s great for the Share menu, since you can immediately see with much greater clarity the screenshot you’re about to capture.
Even if that wasn’t the case, however, just getting rid of the full-screen transition is a much needed step. Perhaps even more crucial in our age of social media is the change to Twitter videos: you’ll be upload clips up to 140 seconds long, instead of the current limit of 10 seconds.
Sony’s changing the way folders and the Library tab works too, although that’s less of a priority for most people. There’s an option that will let you see the content of hidden trophies too, which I’m sure won’t result in any spoilers down the path at any stage.
Version 4.00 of the PS4 update is launching sometime in September, but the beta will go live as of tomorrow.
Comments
20 responses to “Sony Is Finally Updating The Menus On The PS4”
These are great changes. The folders in particularly I’m thrilled for. And being able to see hidden trophies. That’s great, considering if I’m trophy hunting I’d have to go to some third party website just to check them. A share sub-window is just icing on the cake.
SWEET BABY JESUS THANK YOU.
Yes please. While it’s a clean looking UI, it fails quite dismally on a functionality test. Long wait times, wasted screen space, awkward transitions (where none are actually needed at all).
Is that true? One of the most common complaints I see people have is not being able to put games in folders. On a similar level of frequency is the ability to filter out all of the demos and betas you’ve downloaded in the library which the update should address as well.
Overall, Sony seems to be doing pretty well with giving people what they’ve been asking for.
My thoughts exactly, if I can clean up my games menu so I don’t have to scroll through 100 titles, and betas that are no longer even usable, that’s what I’ve been most wanting in an update for a while now.
cue fanboi rage…. looks an awful lot like xbox one’s guide menu….
Because Xbox totally patented the sidebar design…
PS4 has done one thing better than XBOne from the get go.. The freaking menus don’t take 5 minutes to load. It shouldn’t take me 4 minutes to load the party menu.
Xbox hasn’t had that issue in quite some time – not since the Win10 updates
Which look an awful lot like *insert basic tablet-oriented UI design circa 2012 – see Win8 edge menus, Android 3+ UI design, etc*. Honestly, UX design is about making the interaction more familiar – of course there will be cross-pollination of designs. I’m just surprised it’s taken this long for Sony to catch up.
Hope they update the store while they’re at it.
Will you be able to delete unused apps and reorganise how they are sorted for other than games.
Love to be able to get rid of all the uninstalled apps that I dont use (and never have) but for some reason still show up in my menu
It says the library will separate out installed from uninstalled apps/games. That should make it more useful for navigating what’s already on the system. It doesn’t sound like it’ll help when browsing the full collection though.
Very nice to see the UI improved and that hidden trophy feature is long overdue. Very nice update 🙂
I really hope the sort out the powering off of the PS4. It’s exhausting just going through menus just to turn the thing off.
uuummm, use the physical power button on the console? or just hold in the ps button on the controller for a few seconds it’s not hard.
Nice, looking forward to trying out the Beta tomorrow. Sony I expect my confirmation email in the morning ASAP thanks.
So pretty much everything they should have had at launch? Half the time I think these companies lean way too far to the creative side of the design and give a big middle finger to usability.
I don’t mind the PS4 menus but it’s good to see that the small issues are being fixed. Hopefully they don’t go the way of Xbox. Microsoft keeps changing the UI and each time they just make it worse.
How about they let me view my trophies offline?
Good news then! That’s included in the update.
Bring back the feature to play 1080p videos and videos in 60fps in the Media Player. Stupid update nerfed it for some reason.